Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 8/1/17

OK, fine, I’m still not gonna dwell on the time-jump details, but here, here’s what Jeff and Pam and Max from Crankshaft look like ten years into their future, in Funky Winkerbean. Mostly I’m featuring today’s strip because it looks like, after a decade of pouring his youth and his passion into running the Valentine, Max might finally go out of business and be forced into an uncertain job market, only to have his dad say “Gee, that’s a shame! This is where I saw my favorite movie as a kid!”

Beetle Bailey, 8/1/17

Ha ha, yes, it’s definitely funny when a disgruntled army NCO, raging against the rules that restrain his behavior, pulls his sidearm and threatens to “fight bureaucracy!” The best-case scenario here is an awful on-base spree shooting; the worst is that Orville Snorkel emulates Liberia’s Samuel Doe, becoming the second sergeant in world history to lead a successful coup.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/1/17

Grampy’s deflection of the parson’s obvious come-on is as charming as it is subtle.

The Lockhorns, 8/1/17

Leroy … is drunk here, right? Very drunk at 8:30 am and heading to the office?

Family Circus, 8/1/17

“Then I said, ‘That’s some inspiring shit, mom, but if you don’t buy me that costume I’m gonna have a meltdown right here in Party City the likes of which you’ve never seen.’”

Post Content

Mary Worth, 7/25/17

It’s not a secret than the world of newspaper comics is small and getting smaller, and that I’m the only person who’s written about newspaper comics every day for the last 13 years, so obviously I’m on the radar of a lot of comics creators. And sometimes they let me know that they’ve taken notice of me, by means ranging from outright hostility in the comic itself to sending me free stuff in the mail in a successful attempt to get me to promote their branded products. So whenever someone who looks kinda like me pops up in a strip, I think, “Hmm, is this someone who looks kind of like me … supposed to be me?” Generally things are made more ambiguous by the fact that my look isn’t exactly the least common around. Anyway, if this redheaded goateed doctor is in fact supposed to be my in-strip avatar, I take that as a compliment, as he seems supportive of his colleagues, a quality I admire and aspire to. Also the artists have noticed that I started wearing glasses last year, nice job!

One thing I (or my alter ego) won’t have to worry about is being the object of Dawn’s moon-eyed affections, which is I assume where this plot is going, since the Dawn plots always seem to involve her sad romantic life in some way, whether it involves her slapping people she was actually dating when she discovered them two-timing her or prolonging weird, sexually charged friendships with various amputees and adjunct community college faculty members. Our beardy doctor is clearly just passing through this plot to establish the awesome diagnostic prowess of the handsome Ned, who can swiftly identify rare and obscure maladies but also grows his hair long enough to cover his ears, because he doesn’t care what The Man thinks. Just the sort of fella to catch a young girl’s fancy, if you know what I mean, and you will definitely know what I mean after Dawn mopily falls in love with him for the next six to eleven weeks.

Family Circus, 7/25/17

Aww, Billy was going to feed that human finger to one of the tigers and make its whole day. Why you gotta be such a narc, Dolly?

Beetle Bailey, 7/25/17

You know, I had a post all planned out today about Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, and how the decade-wide time discontinuity between them is increasingly irritating — I even had some reference data about the average price of movie tickets over the years! — but then I realized that I was failing on my stated intention to not actually care about that, at all. They’re getting inside my head, man! So instead, here’s today’s Beetle Bailey, which is about how Otto the dog hates cat beatniks but sure wants to fuck sexy lady dogs. Also, this sexy lady dog may be a prostitute.

Post Content

Spider-Man, 7/20/17

It’s true that whatever media conglomerate owns the film rights to the Marvella franchise botched the initial rollout. What with the notoriously troubled production of the first movie in the series, the studio naturally decided to dump it straight to DVD — but surprisingly strong sales got people excited enough to do a theatrical release for Marvella 2. But for a big rollout like that to succeed, you need a huge marketing machine. So yes, MJ is going to have to do publicity not just in San Francisco but also Denver. The studio has just that much riding on the success of this film. Don’t be surprised if they try to jam in an appearance in Phoenix on this junket too. No expense will be spared!

Speaking of sparing no expense, one of the fun things about living LA is that it’s incredibly expensive but it’s also full of transplants from New York, an even more expensive place, who assure you that $2,000 a month for an unassuming two-bedroom bungalow in a marginally sketchy neighborhood is “a real bargain, you’d pay twice that much for a studio in Manhattan and you wouldn’t even have a yard.” So yeah, I can see that planning a SoCal wedding might seem like a bargain if your frame of reference is the tri-state area, but neither Aunt May nor Mole-Man have any family in the region (his being enslaved by the foul Tyrannus miles beneath the Earth’s crust and hers being, uh, Peter and MJ), so they might want to look further afield. I hear Denver is nice!

Family Circus, 7/20/17

The Family Circus, being largely pieced together from decades-old art, preserves an earlier America where we were much less paranoid about safety, especially when it came to children. For instance, in a post-Harambe world, would anyone let a kid climb on a short fence separated from a potentially dangerous elephant by just a few feet of level grass and another, equally short fence? They might, if that kid were Billy, and they got to know him for a few minutes.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/20/17

Haha, whoops, sorry to rain on Rex’s nerd dreams, but li’l John Carter was named after something actually cool. I assume Rex will be angrily muttering that Margie is a “fake geek girl” under his breath for the remainder of her visit.