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Funky Winkerbean and Gil Thorp, 6/19/10

I do bring up the concept “Chekhov’s Gun” a lot in this space — the Russian playwright once noted that “if in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired” — but only because it works so well conceptually with the the painful plotting of continuity comics, in which you always, always see the horror/delight coming. For instance, every cell in every character in Funky Winkerbean is tiny microscopic Chekhov’s Gun, just waiting to burst into glorious deadly cancer. The title character’s own simmering alcoholism serves a similar role, with the question not being if he would backslide into a hateful downward spiral of boozing but when. And now the answer to that when has been revealed to be “twenty minutes after he put his dad into a nursing home.”

But sometimes you don’t see these things coming, and that’s always a pleasant surprise, even if the results are unpleasant for the characters concerned. For instance, I would never have picked Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp as one to drown her sorrows at her coaching failures in booze (though the booze in question is a nice glass of red wine, because she is classy, and a lady). Still, it makes sense, as her husband is pretty much drunk all the time, which is why he doesn’t care that he hasn’t won a championship in any sport in years. He seems pretty happy, so why wouldn’t she follow his example?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/19/10

Longtime readers of Snuffy Smith know that Parson Tuttle, Hootin’ Holler’s only clergyman, is a fraud who plays upon the simple hill folks’ earnest religious impulses to line his own pockets. Thus it should come as no surprise that the ministership of the local ramshackle church is actually a Tuttle clan sinecure, jealously kept within a single family whose members lost their faith generations ago, but refuse to give up a cushy gig.

Ballard Street, 6/19/10

It’s actually pretty rare for me to discuss Ballard Street, as it usually consists of insane people doing inscrutable things in a more or less amusing fashion, which doesn’t leave much room for commentary. As far as I can remember, it never, ever features talking animals of any sort, which makes today’s horror even harder to explain. The people in the comic sometimes dress up in elaborate costumes; are those meant to be people in cowsuits? If so, the business with the “udder” is even more nightmarish than what a plain reading of the strip would suggest.

Mark Trail, 6/19/10

When ordinary mortals lose a pet, they tape signs announcing the fact and the associated reward to lampposts throughout the area where the poor little critter might be. When Mark Trail loses a pet, the local daily paper runs an enormous picture and a two-column story about it in the A section. Why isn’t this on the front page? Was there a nuclear war or something?

Family Circus, 6/19/10

Big Daddy Keane will be using the crayons to depict himself as a member of a non-white ethnic group, so that he can look at the picture and pretend that he is not related to this gaggle of monsters.

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Dennis the Menace, 6/16/10

I have to admit that I find today’s Dennis the Menace funny. No cutesy puns, no adorable kid antics, just Dennis straight-up gettin’ pissed as he realizes that he’s been bamboozled into dressing nicely and going somewhere boring. And he’s being genuinely menacing towards adulthood’s veneer of politeness, the pretense that we put up purporting that we want to be doing the things we have to do, even when we don’t, that keeps civilization from collapsing into chaos. Henry’s tiny smile seems to indicate that he approves of his son’s agitation. “Ha ha, yes, nothing ever good happens to you when you put on a tie, kid! But don’t worry, your belief that you can change your life to make it more like one you want to live will be broken, soon enough.”

Family Circus, 6/16/10

Today’s Family Circus is also funny to me, though much more difficult to get a handle on. Was a sleeping Jeffy attacked by a suddenly wakeful Kittycat, leaving his blanket in shreds and his tiny mind fixated on etymology? Or is he just wandering around the house in his underwear spouting groggy cat-related nonsense for no reason?

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Crock, 6/2/10

So I’m in the midst of a minor fixation on the geography of the Crock universe, which I dearly hope passes soon. But, while I’m being tortured with it, I may as well share it with you! Today’s baffling segment of physical space is what I assume to be the command center of Crock’s Legionnaire post. This appears to be a vast, unadorned concrete chamber; its only contents are work areas for Crock and his adjutant, which are separated by a good twenty feet of emptiness. The exterior of the fort appears primitive, so I’m assuming this windowless chamber isn’t air conditioned; therefore, we must assume that Crock and Poulet spend their days shouting at each other through the thick, unspeakably hot air, their words echoing off the bare walls. Thus, the fort’s architecture duplicates — and perhaps exacerbates — the brutality of the colonial regime that it houses and represents.

Family Circus, 6/2/10

Uh oh, it looks like Billy’s managed to somehow get a hold of some off-Kompound knowledge, possibly from one of the devil’s own “books”! It’s totally in character for the Keane eldest to use some hard-won nugget of information to prove his superiority over his little brother, but his use of it here is weirdly contextless. Wouldn’t it be easier to make Jeffy feel stupid by pointing out that his attempts to color on a piece of paper that isn’t laid on a surface are doomed to failure? As it is, Jeffy is given an opportunity to offer up one of his trademarked defiantly ignorant comebacks.

Mary Worth, 6/2/10

Her work with Bonnie and Ernie complete, Mary has decided to jump right into another meddle without even the rest-period denoted by a pool party. This is a physically demanding choice — you can see that she’s checking her pulse to make sure that her body can handle it — but she’s highly motivated to reach a new pinnacle of her craft.

Pluggers, 6/2/10

Pluggers have no friends. The people pluggers think are their friends are just those acquaintances too polite to abruptly break off conversations and walk away, no matter how much they want to. Once these people have managed to extract themselves from a plugger’s awkward grip, any promises of future social interaction that were offered up in order to smooth their exit are immediately forgotten.