Post Content

Spider-Man, 11/25/17

It’s incredibly crucial for continuity strips like Spider-Man to tie up every last narrative loose end in order to satisfy their famously nitpicky audiences. For instance, when the Parkers arrived at Dr. Connors’ lab, it was apparently abandoned, which is why our hero barged in and got womped in the face with some big metal thing that was never fully explained, actually, and then discovered that the lab was still fully occupied by Dr. Connors. But if that was the case, then where was Dr. Connors’ vehicle, huh? Surely if a sensible minivan with a bunch of crazy re-arm-ulating equipment thrown in the cargo area were parked in the front the building, Peter would’ve immediately said, “Ah ha! Dr. Connors is home, despite the apparently dilapidated state of his lab! I shall knock before entering!” Too bad for Peter that the lab comes with off-street parking, although it’s probably great for Dr. Connors, since it’s no doubt tricky to haul big pieces of equipment to and from the car with only one arm, and besides you probably shouldn’t leave a bunch of scientific gizmos with high resale value too visible in car just parked at the curb. Anyway, I look forward to learning how exactly all the windows got broken (probably by the big metal womping thing, which took a while to calibrate before it only womped intruders).

Funky Winkerbean, 11/25/17

One of my least favorite Funky Winkerbean moves (and really, it’s quite a list) is when one of the characters makes a joke, and normally you’d think that joke represented to strip’s punchline, except instead the characters then assess how corny the joke is, and that’s actually supposed to be the punchline, somehow??? Today’s strip really builds a whole emotional arc out of it, with Becky giving Harry a sly look right as she unleashes her pun in the second panel, and Harry wagging his finger as he assesses it the third. I look forward to the day where someone makes some terrible wordplay and then we just have weeks and weeks of strips analyzing it!

Mary Worth, 11/25/17

Shoutout to Pedro for adhering to the salesman’s creed: Always. Be. Closing. Sure, Wilbur just caught him making out with Wilbur’s girlfriend, who’s supposed to be his cousin, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Wilbur is closed off to prospect of buying some discounted salsa lessons. You’ll never know until you ask!

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 11/15/17

It’s really pretty hard to figure out what the saddest thing going on here is. Is it that the Army can’t accommodate the needs of its older officers and their touchy digestive/urinary systems? Is it that General Halftrack is so thoroughly dedicated to his job that he’s willing to piss and/or shit himself in public? Is it that he’s decided that wearing five adult diapers simultaneously is a good strategy, even though a little thought on the logistics of this would reveal that you’d pretty quickly need to get somewhere private to remove some of the layers, which negates the whole purpose of the move? Or is it that Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC feels a need to compete with Marvin in the piss play/scat humor space? Whatever you choose, I think we should all give kudos to the artist, who managed to sympathetically depict the true pathos and anxiety on General Halftrack’s face while simultaneously giving him a comically large diaper-padded ass.

Marvin, 11/15/17

Speaking of Marvin, it’s not true that all the strip’s characters are required to stew in their own feces or urine in order to amuse this feature’s dedicated readership. Technically, their contract just says they need to occasionally “soil themselves.”

Funky Winkerbean, 11/15/17

Oh, good news, beloved embittered dead comics book artist Phil Holt has now joined Dead Saint Lisa in Funkyverse purgatory, where you just follow your loved ones around all the time, even if that means you have to watch them fool around in a car. Since Phil’s only loved ones were his precious comics covers, he’ll be following them to wherever they’re gonna get auctioned off to, I guess. Anyway, I’ve always hoped that one of the benefits of moving on to the next plane of existence is that you get a certain perspective on and insight into our mortal world, but it’s tough to watch Phil learn that comic books really are for nerds.

Family Circus, 11/5/17

Ha ha, Jeffy has misunderstood something as criticism and is absolutely furious about it, and is seeking reassurance from an authority figure. He’s gonna go far in life, this one!

Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 11/14/17

Oh, hey, remember those comic book covers Darin inherited? Well, he’s decided to auction them off to benefit Lisa’s Legacy Fund! The comic book covers are incredibly valuable, naturally, I don’t think we even need to question that, even though the embittered artist who left them to Darin died in poverty, so probably the money they’ll raise at this big auction will finally put the Lisa’s Legacy Fund over the top and they’ll cure breast cancer. Anyway, while today’s dialogue is a real treat for fans of word-sequences that no human being would ever utter, don’t let it distract you from the colorist’s error in panel two that produced a nightmare mass of writhing hands sticking out of Darin’s torso.

Judge Parker, 11/14/17

Huh, is Randy going to become a prison-reform radical as a result of his wife’s imprisonment? Is he going to bring down the carceral state … from the inside? I’ll just point out that, while April has some justified beefs with the prison-industrial complex, I don’t see her questioning, say, the government’s employment of an army of shadowy assassins operating across a dizzying array of intelligence agencies.

Spider-Man, 11/14/17

Man, when I filled out that survey last month about what I wanted to see more of in future Spider-Man storylines and checked the box next to “Spider-Man walking and/or web-slinging into things, painfully and face-first,” I didn’t think I’d get results so quickly!

Mary Worth, 11/14/17

And heeeeeeeeeeeere comes the grift