Post Content

Pluggers, 10/31/17

Today’s Pluggers is another look into the sad world of the young plugger bear-man. I’m not saying he’s sad so much because he’s eating ice cream out of its container — who amongst us hasn’t done the same? — so much as because of the location where he’s chosen to do so. This is a man(imal) whose car routinely serves as his dining room and who “cuts out the middleman” by just straight-up letting food scraps from his poorly constructed sandwiches accumulate in the sink, so I suppose part of the point is that he’s not held back by society’s rules about where one should feed, but still, something about the way he’s carefully leaned the lid to the ice cream against the … bread box? toaster oven? Whatever, it’s just some random and probably largely unused piece of kitchen equipment that our bear-man hero mostly employs to hold up the disposable packaging of whatever it is he’s consuming whole while standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, alone.

The Phantom, 10/31/17

The current weekly Phantom plot involves a journey to Walker’s Table, a mesa in the American Southwest that at some point came under the control of our Africa-based hero-lineage, where the Ghost-Who-Doesn’t-Check-In-With-His-Far-Flung-Real-Estate-Holdings tried to land a plane last week only to be driven off by gunfire. I’m mostly just amused by this long list of social malcontents who may or may not be lurking up there. If the ideological base of the occupying force really is so diverse, the smart bet would probably just be to leave them holed up there until they turn on each other and see who comes out on top. And don’t count out the Trekkies, man! The whole thing where they have to pay $10 a month for the new CBS streaming app in order to watch Discovery has ’em pissed.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/31/17

Ha ha! It’s funny because this guy has married a number of women, and he wants to give them all a book about a husband who watches his wife die of cancer, as a “gift”!

Post Content

Mark Trail, 10/24/17

Hey, remember this guy? The guy from the bank-robbing gang who was so worried about the fancy new facial recognition software the FBI has on hand? Of course you do, because the last time you saw him, way back in April, it was literally the same drawing:

Now, I know what you’re saying: “Ha, this guy was worried about facial recognition software but he thinks he can beat it by just getting a haircut?” Well, sadly, he didn’t even do that! He just died his ponytail to match the upholstery in his plane:

Anyway, I’m not sure why, if the bank-robbing gang had access to a plane, they didn’t just all get in the plane to escape, rather than one guy getting in it and the other two taking the money and a hostage to a remote airstrip and meeting up with the plane guy there. I guess that’s why I’m not in the bank-robbery game! Too many moving parts for my feeble intellect!

Hi and Lois, 10/24/17

There’s so much that I don’t understand about what’s going on here. Is there an occasion for this strip, in which Hi and Thirsty are suddenly taking the subway home with Leroy Lockhorn, Walt Duncan, Greg Wilkins, Homer Simpson, Mario, and … an Orthodox Jewish (?) character in the foreground I don’t recognize? Is there some common theme holding these guys all together, other than “they’re from cartoons, or, in the case of Mario, a video game?” Aren’t crossover events usually cheerful affairs? Why is this one built around a totally unrelated “joke” about how Hi and Thirsty feel unmoored and adrift in life, with everyone looking extremely depressed? Why does Walt look so disheveled? Why is Homer given a standard white-person flesh tone rather than his native bright yellow? Why are Thirsty and Hi on a train when they’ve always been depicted as driving back and forth to their pedestrian-hostile suburb?

Funky Winkerbean, 10/24/17

Funky Winkerbean: You Always Swore You Were Going To Get Out Of This Town, But Somehow You Never Did™!

Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 10/19/17

Oh, well, looks like those stone-faced characters just wanted to track Darin down so they could send him free classic comics covers! Don’t worry, it’s not all fun, though: he only gets them because beloved comics artist Phil Holt dropped dead. You remember Phil Holt, right? He was a stand-in for real-life comics legend Jack Kirby who was reduced to penury and forced to work as a caricaturist at children’s parties, where Darin met him by chance and they talked for maybe five minutes! Anyway, apparently that brief conversation was the most validation Holt received in his twilight years, so he left his only valuable possessions to Darin in his will, which not only has cast a pall of melancholy over everything but also appears to be about to drive a wedge of jealousy between Darin and Mopey Pete.

Dennis the Menace, 10/19/17

An underrated way to menace: just sit absolutely still and watch your target try to obscure his own impotence in a cloud of misplaced nostalgia.