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Mary Worth, 1/28/19

Monday is starting with BIG MARY WORTH NEWS, everybody: it turns out that Professor Ian Cameron will not just give you a good grade even if you don’t do your assignments, no matter how vigorously you wink at him. With that out of the way, we can now begin to explore the fact that he’s been ignoring his wife for entirely non-affair-related reasons, probably because he just doesn’t like her very much.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/28/19

Hmm, now I’m beginning to lean away from my longstanding “Hootin’ Holler is an extremely impoverished community that’s geographically, economically, and culturally isolated from mainstream American life” theory and pivoting to “Hootin’ Holler is a deliberately anachronistic intentional community/compound, much like the titular setting of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.’

Dennis the Menace, 1/28/19

Dennis Mitchell only received the nickname “the Menace” during his trial for crimes against humanity, when the results of his awful genetic experiments came to light, but there were signs of what was to come from a very early stage in his life.

Family Circus, 1/28/19

Ha ha, kids sure say the darndest things in Munchausen syndrome by proxy situations!

Sam and Silo, 1/28/19

I admit that I’m still having a hard time trying to figure out what Sam and Silo’s deal is, even in terms of its cultural situation, by which I mean: what are the things outside of itself, in the larger cultural universe, that it references? Today we have name-checked the most famous political crisis in American history and … a 2006 cheating scandal in international test cricket? Never change, Sam and Silo, you delightfully unplaceably weird strip!

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/20/19

I like that Rex’s reaction to some uncouth ruffian making a scene is to stare approvingly out at the bleak, barren land below. “Look at it, Brayden,” he says. “No people with their messy emotional or biological needs. Just vast, endless silence. If this plane were to drop out of the sky and smear itself across that austere landscape right now, it would honestly be a blessing.”

Family Circus, 1/20/19

Pretty sure this is actually a demonstration of two very different kinds of child’s mind: Dolly’s, which has just begun to understand what a metaphor is, and Jeffy’s, which very much does not and possibly never will.

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The Phantom, 1/16/19

Been a while since I kept you updated on the thrilling story of Heloise in The Phantom after she personally defeated the Nomad, the terrorist mastermind her father could never catch, by knocking him unconscious with her phone. Heloise handed the Nomad over to the cops, and then, presumably to escape revenge from the Nomad’s fanatical followers, fled with Kadia (the Nomad’s daughter, who didn’t know until just now that her dad was the Nomad) to the consulate of her home nation of Bangalla. Now they’re about to be rescued by the president of Bangalla himself, and let’s just say that country’s official self-presentation as a thriving post-colonial democracy governed by the rule of law isn’t quite buttressed by the head of state personally spiriting a family member of the shadowy leader of a paramilitary force out of the United States to avoid unpleasant questions from law enforcement. Bangalla may insist that the main heritage of their British colonial past is an elected parliament and independent judiciary, but in fact it appears to be President Luaga’s insistence on wearing morning dress 24 hours a day.

Gil Thorp, 1/16/19

I turn to the comics not just for amusement, but edification, and to that end I am pleased to have Learned Something from today’s Gil Thorp. Specifically, I have learned about the Robb Report, which began as a mimeographed newsletter selling Rolls Royces and Confederate memorabilia and somehow morphed into an odious ‘lifestyle brand’ publication mainly consisting of pictures of Rich People Things, which, isn’t that what we have Instagram for? Anyway, it was well worth learning all that so I could appreciate the absurdity of Robby saying, confidently, to presumably dozens of radio listeners, that on his report, “the richness is in the words,” proving that despite his claims to be a wordsmith he doesn’t actually know how “richness” is used in contemporary English. It would be better if he claimed “the richness is in the frosting,” and this whole thing with the billboards was just an attempt to drum up interest in his website of cake recipes.

Mary Worth, 1/16/19

Let’s try, if we can, to avoid thinking about Jannie’s increasingly hilarious vaping technique and instead focus on Ian’s grading strategies. What do you think his emotional arc is over the course of the semester? Is his plan from the get-go to lull his students into complacency with good grades in the opening weeks of the semester only to smash their hopes and dreams later? Or does he begin each class convinced that this year the students are actually going to appreciate his talents, and only turns on them when it becomes clear that isn’t the case?

Family Circus, 1/16/19

“They said that blondes have more fun but that doesn’t seem to be true at all! Now people just realize I’m related to Billy! I hate Billy!”