Post Content

Mark Trail, 5/7/18

Have I plugged my novel lately? Is it possible that I have relatively new readers who aren’t even aware that I wrote a novel? Horrors! Guys, I wrote a novel, called The Enthusiast, that’s about a mysterious marketing agency that tries to drum up enthusiasm for products and projects and abstract concepts, and you can buy it where books are sold, though you’re probably after the Amazon link, aren’t you? ANYHOO, a lot of the book revolves around obsessive fan communities, specifically fans of old soap opera comic strips, something you could guess I know a little bit about, and railfans who are really into subways, something you might not know that I’m similarly into but I am! Where I’m going with this, other trying to boost enthusiasm for something I’m selling within my own content in an act of meta-marketing, is that I’m “in the know” enough to be aware that adjacent to train obsessives you have your airplane obsessives, and Rusty seems to be on his way to becoming one. Sure, most of them are into spotting different kinds of planes and detailing their flight experiences on different airlines, but I’m sure there are whole Internet message boards to serve those who, like Rusty, are fixated on the relative size of various airports and of the crowds of people who use them. You do you, Rusty! Never be embarrassed about the things you think are interesting!

Spider-Man, 5/7/18

I’m not going to lie, my entire knowledge of the Hulk comes from the occasional Marvel Cinematic Universe movie I see, but … is it really part of the canon that, when he’s in non-Hulk form, he leaves the scene by just, like, swimming off shirtlessly or whatever. Can that be right? It seems like that can’t be right.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/7/18

Here’s today’s Funky Winkerbean, in which some poor sap can’t figure out if Les is named “Les Moore” or “Legacy Trilogy,” and Les does not seem very interested in helping him figure it out!

Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 5/3/18

Hey, you know how Funky Winkerbean is extremely up its own asshole about comics? Like, it’s a comic and one of its main locales is a comic book shop and many of its characters are either comics obsessives or comics obsessives who managed to snag actual jobs in the comics industry? And now those guys (who, to reiterate, are themselves characters in a comic strip) are being given the opportunity to create their own fresh new comics characters? Well, get this: what if this comic-within-the-comic had its origins in [pause for dramatic music sting] A COMIC BOOK SHOP????? Really makes you think, huh?

Mark Trail, 5/3/18

So for some reason Mark has spent the last several days recounting to his family the plot of ¡Three Amigos!, a 1986 Steve Martin-Chevy Chase-Martin Short vehicle that is widely remembered with a certain amount of warmth, but apparently Rusty has checked out from this lesson in pop culture to go talk to a girl. A girl! This is what happens when you leave the compound! Mark’s weird sidelong glance in the last panel shows that he knows that, in theory, it’s important for someone Rusty’s age to learn the basic social skills necessary to interact with another human outside of his immediate kinship group, but that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it.

Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 4/24/18

A question continually bedevils longtime readers of Dennis the Menace, in whose cursèd company I sadly count myself: why does Mr. Wilson allow Dennis, his most hated enemy, to spend so much time in his home, disrupting the peace in retirement that he has earned? Today’s panel gives us a glimpse at the answer: Mr. Wilson employs Dennis as the loathsome equivalent of a shabbas goy, using the child as an assistant in the sorts of tasks that would already fill him with distaste or unease, so that he can shift his anger from himself to Dennis. Perhaps allowing Mr. Wilson to play out this twisted dynamic rather than facing his own emotions honestly is one of the most menacing things Dennis has done.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/24/18

You know what they say — never meet your heroes! They say this because you’ll learn that they eat food in restaurants and have ideas in places that exist in the real world, rather than existing as creatures of pure mind, I guess? I guess that’s what they mean, based on this Funky Winkerbean, which is otherwise incomprehensible?