Post Content

Family Circus, 11/11/15

The “Keane Kid looks disheveled and drops his stuff on the ground and leans back on the door as he arrives home from school” is a bit of visual shorthand for “tough day” that the Family Circus deploys a lot. I’ve always had minor practical gripes with it (don’t the kids all come home from school together? are Jeffy and Dolly outside pounding on the door trying to get in?) but today it occurred to me that it also kind of looks like Billy has run desperately into the house and is trying to keep out someone — or something. Something that stalked and devoured the children sitting on either side of Billy in his classroom. But he made it out alive, by remaining absolutely silent.

Spider-Man, 11/11/15

So this lady who straight-up bashed in the Atlantean guard’s helmets with a club of some sort is … just some random doctor? Who wanders the docks of New York, looking for fish-children to forcibly rescue? I did a cursory Google search for “Liz Bellman” and “marvel” and have satisfied myself that this isn’t the secret identity of some random long-standing Marvel superhero/villain who I’m not familiar with but who will be starring in a Netflix original MCU series in 2017, but please be sure to correct me in the comments if I’m wrong!

Marvin, 11/11/15

Marvin, you’re starting a bank to bilk babies out of money they don’t have and your hobby is shitting yourself. Please don’t try to pop-shame your father.

Post Content

The Lockhorns, 11/3/15

INT. – UNDERGROUND HACKER HQ – NIGHT

Dozens of malicious HACKERS sit around a conference table in a murkily lit room. All have laptops in front of them; banks of computer servers with blinking lights line the walls.

HACKER #1
Gentlemen, I’ve summoned you here today to present you with … some disturbing content.

HACKER #2
Please. We’re the kings of the dark web. We’ve seen and heard things that would send normal people’s minds spinning into insanity.

HACKER #1
That may be, but this is horror of a different kind. I want you to turn your attention to today’s Lockhorns.

HACKER #3
You mean the comic? From the newspaper? I didn’t know they were still making those.

HACKER #1
Please point your browsers to the “Comics Kingdom” website, where you’ll be able to find the most recent panel.

HACKER #2
But it’s a paywalled site! How can we see it without paying?

All the HACKERS laugh uproariously as they effortlessly HACK the site with a few keystrokes. Their laughter ends abruptly as they see today’s Lockhorns panel.

HACKER #2
My god.

HACKER #3
They made a “dark web” joke.

HACKER #4
In a newspaper comic strip.

HACKER #2
Does this mean…

HACKER #1
Yes. Hacking is over. Being a hacker, knowing about the dark web … it’s not cool anymore. None of it.

The hackers close their laptops and begin smashing them to bits with HAMMERS.

HACKER #3
So, anyone else have any life skills?

HACKER #2
I waited tables for a while.

HACKER #4
I can do some bookeepping.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith and The Family Circus, 11/3/15

Here in the United States it’s Odd-Numbered Election Year, which is important to voters in a few states (enjoy, Louisiana!) but mostly pretty low-key. That hasn’t stopped a couple of longstanding legacy comic strips from getting political, though — specifically, from expressing outright contempt for the whole concept of electoral democracy. How did the dinosaurs come to rule the earth? Through some fair election process? Don’t be a chump. They seized control of the planet with their teeth and claws. Maybe the piddling political issues of the day can be resolved by voting, but when it comes to basic questions of species dominance, we still live in the constant war of all against all. Snuffy’s neighbors might feel smug about performing their so-called “civic duty”; but Snuffy knows he’s doing the real important work, which is preventing our planet from being overrun by fish-men.

Mary Worth and The Phantom, 11/3/15

oh

HAPPENING

Post Content

Spider-Man, 10/26/15

Oh, hey, Spider-Man vs. Namor, remember that whole business? It’s been 11 days since I last updated you and these two guys are still just jawin’ down by the docks, getting ready to maybe someday go over to the U.N. to talk about pollution or whatever. I assumed this was just the strip’s usual go-nowhere pace, but apparently Namor was stalling as he brought out his secret weapon: a poor, sick undersea child who will tug at the world’s heartstrings and cause the surface-dweller leadership to rethink our ocean-polluting ways and hahahahaha I can’t even finish that sentence. Yo, Namor, there are plenty of human children who get sick due to water pollution; do you think we’re gonna care about some little fish-boy? Anyway, undersea life seems like it’s pretty harsh, with no concept of “focusing the positive,” since Namor responds to Pharus’s plea for hope by letting everyone know that, nope, this kid’s gonna die, and the best-case scenario now is that he does it adorably enough to get some kind of toothless UN Security Council resolution passed.

Gil Thorp, 10/26/15

“It didn’t happen to Survivor or American Idol, two shows that launched early in the era of reality television and were very different from anything else on American TV at the time. What do we need? A time machine? A time machine, to go back and launch our show in a less reality-saturated programming environment?”

Family Circus, 10/26/15

Man, I for one really wish we had gotten to see what Jeffy and Dolly did to get themselves expelled from the Keane Kompound, with only their paternal grandmother and God willing to take them in. Was it redhead-related? Did Big Daddy Keane get a revelation that gingers were spiritually unclean?