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Hi and Lois, 8/19/15

As a baby, Trixie is just learning how the world works. This is what she’s learned today: anything made of organic matter eventually dies and rots. There’s only one friend that will last long though to meet Trixie’s emotional needs: the sun, an incomprehensibly vast ball of atomic fire that will sear our tiny world for billions upon billions of years.

Blondie, 8/19/15

Haha, yes, remember recently when Facebook implemented this extremely brand new feature? You know, back in April of 2013? I’m not sure what’s the saddest backstory for what happened here. Did the Blondie creative team just now noticed that they could add these dumb little things to their Facebook statuses, months after everyone else got bored with them? Did this joke only now occur to them, and they felt a need to call Facebook emoticons “new” so it would still seem relevant, somehow? Is the strip written and queued up more than two years in advance, and no variation in order is permitted, not even to keep topical jokes topical? I prefer another explanation: Blondie is created by a cabal of Old Ones, who have always existed and will always exist Beyond Time. To them, two years is but an infinitesimal instant, less time than it would take them to blink, if they had eyelids, if they had eyes.

Beetle Bailey, 8/19/15

We’ve never seen General Halftrack’s office from this angle before, and now we know why: it’s depressing as shit. Just blank walls, no furniture, no art, and a bunch of scattered golf balls. No wonder he drinks.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/19/15

♬ Hey Cayla ♬ I know when that’s gonna happen ♬ It’s neveeeeerrrr ♬

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/18/15

Back a couple of months ago, when Darrin suggested to Les that he should “write about how you met my mom … how you met Lisa,” this is what I had to say on the subject:

What you should do with your next book is write about how you met and fell in love with Cayla, your current wife, and how that new relationship helped you move forhahahahaha obviously I’m kidding, write about Lisa, always Lisa, write about meeting Lisa and it will seem exciting and romantic at first but a miasma of despair will always be floating over it, always, because Lisa is dead and Lisa is always dead and you’re going to write about Lisa’s death forever and ever.

I’m ashamed to admit that at the time I had forgotten that Les had already written that book about Cayla, two years ago, and had promised to turn the trip to micromanage the vanity press that he would pay to publish it into a fully tax-deductible Hong Kong vacation. Except … that never happened? And now Les’s “publisher” has decided to not publish that book, which I’m sure Cayla enjoys thinking of as a “sequel,” until it can be integrated into the Lisa Trilogy of which it is obviously an integral part.

Anyway, Cayla’s been spending a lot of the strip lately staring dead-eyed and silent at Les as he douches it up, and I’ve been wondering: what if she decides to divorce him? At first, this seems extremely likely, as it would no doubt up the misery quotient for the strip. But I don’t think any character has actually received a deserved comeuppance for their terribleness in this strip since Cindy left Funky when his drinking got completely out of control. The pain people in the Funkyverse suffer is capricious and arbitrary. An arc where they experience negative repercussions as a result of their conduct would require someone to acknowledge that there was something wrong with their conduct in the first place.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/18/15

Meanwhile, in Rex Morgan, gold-digging former nanny Heather Avery is still young and vital, making it all the more tragic that her older, wealthy husband is sliding into dementia. I’m not sure if she’s coming on to the hired help here or just engaging in her right as an aristocrat to imperiously dissect her servant’s personal life in front him.

Mary Worth, 8/18/15

My questions as to whether the participants in the latest Mary Worth dinner from hell recognize it as a dinner from hell have now been answered. Look at Ian’s expression in panel two. That’s the face of a man who’s seen some shit, by God.

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/14/15

Oh, hey, I didn’t mention it the other day, but Darrin got offered a job helping Mopey Pete on the comic book movie he’s writing, and Jessica immediately agreed to move to Los Angeles with him, which Darrin treated as if this were some great favor she was doing him! Which seems to imply that someone, anyone, might want to live in the eternal Vale of Sadness that is Westview, and specifically the apartment above Montoni’s that presumably smells like mediocre pizza and depression all the time; it also ignores the fact (just like Funky Winkerbean the strip has been mostly ignoring the fact) that Jessica is in fact an aspiring documentary filmmaker so maybe … Los Angeles … might a place she’d want to live? Just a thought.

Anyway, clearly Montoni’s needs somebody paying rent on the apartment upstairs to supplement declining pizza revenue, and clearly Montoni’s needs someone in charge to make sure the giant barrels of low-grade pizza sauce shipped in monthly haven’t spoiled, and it looks like Wally is next in line for both positions! Wally already has a perfectly nice house that he and his wife live in, of course, but the needs of the pizza collective outweigh any rights he has to choose where he lives, as his look of stone panic in panel three makes very clear.

Mary Worth, 8/14/15

Thank you, Hilton Berkes: “I see enough of you on campus, Ian” is a sick burn for the ages. When I am cold at night, I will bring this strip up on my phone and bask in its cruel, warming glow.

Crankshaft, 8/14/15

Here’s today’s Crankshaft! It’s about uncontrollable pooping.