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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/29/15

I’m not sure which I find more jarring here: the fact that Jughaid has used the flatlander term “spoiler alert” (in Hootin’ Holler, as in many traditional cultures, entertainment takes the form of bards putting their own spin on endless variations of well-known narratives, so the very idea of a novel, linear plot with a surprising ending would be foreign to these children), or the fact that the normally raven-haired Miz Prunelly is suddenly a blonde.

Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, 1/29/15

Well, the Dick Tracy-Funky Winkerbean crossover is over, but the Funkyverse still has CROSSOVER FEVER!!!!! With nobody currently willing to cross over with it, though, it’s been forced to mingle timelines with … itself. Yes, there’s now a cross-decade Funky Winkerbean–Crankshaft narrative confluence in progress, about Crankshaft driving beloved (?) band leader Harry Dinkle and the band to some band championship or something. Funky’s installments are using Old Timey Photo Album Frame panels, the strip’s sign for Things That Happened Long Ago, which is confusing since both strips take place more or less in the present. All this timestream mucking about mainly serves to sadly let us know that, since Crankshaft’s life continues beyond this adventure, Harry will never make good on his promise to slide that baton straight through Crankshaft’s leathery old flesh and right into his black, shriveled heart.

Six Chix, 1/29/15

One good thing about having a nationally syndicated comic strip: when you experience some minor irritation in your daily life, the rapidly aging and declining comics-reading demographic will get to hear about it, by God.

Pluggers, 1/29/15

The only time pluggers will be addressed with the slightest glimmer of dignity is when they are already in the grave.

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Funky Winkerben, 1/25/15

Welp, the Dick Tracy–Funky Winkerbean crossover is wrapping up without a single person dying in a hail of bullets, and I for one am pretty disappointed about it. I do like the words of life wisdom that Holly and Dick are trading here, though. Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t immediately judge (and subsequently arrest and/or shoot for “resisting arrest”) people just because they look “shady,” you know? Maybe you should instead determine their worth based on their enjoyment of cultural production units that you also enjoy. I’m pretty sure that the main character of High Fidelity has the exact opposite of this revelation at the story’s conclusion, which is evidence that he’s grown less shallow as a person, but, baby steps, I guess.

Apartment 3-G, 1/25/15

Apartment 3-G has meanwhile devolved into a full-on Lu Ann dreamscape? “Tommie, why are you leaving the apartment to go to work, in the morning, as the workday starts?” “I’m going to work. Don’t forget to wake up Margo!” “Gasp! Margo is gone!” [stands in the middle of the hallway, nowhere near a door or anywhere where Margo might be expected to be]

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/25/15

While details are murky, archaeological evidence seems to indicate that the Polynesian settlers of Easter Island deforested the place after a few centuries there, which meant they were no longer able to build and move the huge moai statues the island is famous for — and, perhaps more importantly, were no longer able to build oceangoing vessels that allowed them to fish, which in turn led to a rapid decline in population. Meanwhile, in Hootin’ Holler, it seems that the residents are setting in motion an ecological catastrophe of their own, unsustainably extracting fuel to power one of the community’s main economic engines (moonshine production) at the long-term expense of environmental resources needed for the other (chicken theft).

Panels from Hi and Lois, 1/25/15

Look, just between you and me, I never really cared for Mad Men, but if the show’s booze-soaked popularity had anything to do with the return of wacky retro “Thirsty is a drunk” jokes in Hi and Lois, then it has done good for this world.

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Heathcliff, 1/22/15

Comics are an incredibly conservative art form — not necessarily in a political or ideological sense, but in that they preserve visual tropes from the comics that current artists grew up with, thus sometimes presenting a world that vanished long ago. Thus, just as Dagwood’s suburban neighborhood is lousy with semi-feral dogs, so does Heathcliff view going to the bathroom as a primarily outside activity. This was the the norm for pet cats for most of their millennia-long period of domestication, but with the invention of clay kitty litter nearly 70 years ago, the idea of a cat doing its business inside the house became … well, significantly less worthy of a joke in a cat-themed comic, let’s just say that.

Funky Winkerbean and Dick Tracy, 1/22/15

The intrusion of Dick Tracy into the Funkyverse is having interesting effects on the Funky-space-time continuum. This reality has already been able to accommodate multiple discontinuous time-tracks, as seen by the apparent coexistence of the Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft timelines 10 years apart, with the one only occasionally bleeding into the other. But now with Dick and Sam in town, the timeline seems to have rapidly bifurcated into two closely linked parallel streams: in one, they crack vaguely wise at one another about comic books; in the other, they growl menacingly about how they totally have the right to just shoot this guy in the gut for “resisting arrest.”