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Six Chix, 9/13/21

I know I often slag on Six Chix for doing strips that are opaque, baffling nonsense, so here’s a change of pace: today’s strip is opaque, baffling nonsense and I love it! Ha ha, she’s like a dog walker … but for wigs! I think what really makes it for me is that the wigs are on fake wig heads (not sure what the correct term for this is and not looking it up), which are in turn on wheels, because that’s the only way this absurd scenario would even vaguely work. Anyway, A+ work, Six Chix, please keep up to good kind of opaque, baffling nonsense, as opposed to the bad kind, which I will definitely let you know about if you slip up and do it again.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/13/21

I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that the sort of person who has a comics blog is also the sort of person who would get thrown into a tizzy by the revelation that Rex Morgan’s sons are going to kindergarten, but I definitely was thrown into said tizzy, because Rex and June’s sons are babies, right? But that said, the Morgans stole June’s dying best friend’s son in late 2017, when he and their non-stolen biological son were about a year old, so that would make them about kindergarten age now, assuming the Morgans age in real time, which they absolutely 100% do not. The last thing we want is this thing turning in For Better Or For Worse or something. And if Sarah was like five or six when the boys came on the scene, that would make her about 10 now, which is trembling on the precipice of very bad things. Do we want Sarah as a tween? Sarah hitting puberty? This strip needs to step back from the brink now, before somebody gets hurt.

Family Circus, 9/13/21

Not sure whose facial expressions I like better here: Ma Keane’s (“Ha ha, we do not have any jelly without peanut butter in it and that’s very gross, ha ha ha!!!”) or Billy and Jeffy’s (“What, does this dipshit think he’s the King of England or something?”).

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Family Circus, 9/10/21

A lot has changed for me, both in my life and vis-à-vis my relationship to the comics, since I started this blog in 2004, and definitely the one change I would’ve been least likelty to predict is that I would come to have an occasional grudging admiration for the Family Circus. And I didn’t even have to become a parent for it to happen! Yes, the strip is like 75% darnedest-thing-saying and reused art by volume, but every once in a while you get a great image like today’s, when Daddy has very clearly just had the epiphany that he could be doing literally anything else right now.

Curtis, 9/10/21

Curtis is doing a thing this week where our title character confronts rival mobs of pro- and anti-mask parents in front of his school and I have literally no interest in engaging with it, but I do want to say that “Look, everyone, a child wearing his hat backwards wanting to speak!” is definitely the funniest thing I’ve read this week.

Mark Trail, 9/10/21

A lot has changed for Mark Trail over the years, too, but I’m happy to report that there is one constant in the Trailian multiverse and that is that Mark is absolutely ripped.

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Arctic Circle, 9/1/21

Arctic Circle started out as a nice little fish-out-of-water joke-a-day strip about three penguins (Ed, Oscar, and Gordo, from left to right) stranded in the Arctic, sort of a cold-water Boner’s Ark. It has evolved into a 24/7/365 environmental catastrophe sermon, with some version or other of “ain’t it awful?” in the final panel. But today’s seems to suggest that we mass-murder insects to reduce pesticide use on soybeans, raising the question: how?

Phantom, 9/1/21

Hey, remember the last time we saw Savarna eight years ago, Old Stripey was lecturing her about their “incompatible methods,” how her “killing days end here,” and taking away her weapon? Yeah, well, looks like that ship has sailed.

And as a long-time Phantom/Savarna ‘shipper, let me add—are those eyes really empty behind that mask, or do I detect the subtle BRAKOOOOM of LOVE?

Sally Forth, 9/1/21

“That thing I do, the one that looks like it stems from reciprocal affection and a shared sense of impending loss? It’s hatred, Hil, and resentment! I’m a sociopath! Welp, great summer, girlfriend, see ya around!”

Luann, 9/1/21 and 3/17/2010 reprint of 3/18/1985

Where, oh where, will Luann be in 30 years? Let’s just look back 36 years and see if we can establish a regression line!

Hmm. Not “regression,” exactly, but hardly progress. Better get to changing those media stereotypes, Bernice, or at least the sheets.

Family Circus, 9/1/21

And if Billy starts avoiding Bibles, speaking dead languages, and smelling of brimstone, it’s ’cause he ate those deviled eggs.

Is “Venmo” a verb? Try it and see!

— Uncle Lumpy