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Gil Thorp, 6/19/20

Good news from Gil Thorp, everyone! Mike “The Mayor” didn’t just slink off to the bad kid school and give up on his hopes and dreams after being expelled for bringing a butter knife into class; instead, he’s training the other bad kids at his bad kid school for an epic slobs vs. snobs baseball battle against his old Mudlark teammates. And he just found his secret weapon Corina Karenna (named, I assume, after the beloved (?) 1994 Ray Liotta/Whoopi Goldberg vehicle Corrina, Corrina), who’s very good at baseball and is a total anarchist. The infield fly rule? The “unwritten rules of baseball”? Corina will be ignoring all of them as the misfits roll over the Mudlarks in an unauthorized game played “thunderdome-style,” i.e., with no umpires, parents, or sense of decency.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/19/20

Today’s Funky Winkerbean made me realize that despite having read about the glory and pageantry of Lisa’s Story for years and years and years, I don’t actually … know what exactly Lisa’s Story is about? I mean, I know Lisa’s actual life story, but does the book/movie treatment cover the whole arc of her life, or just the cancer stuff or what? And, like, she died pretty young — Darrin, who was born when she was in high school, was in high school when she passed away, so she couldn’t have been older than her mid-30s. And she had two cancer bouts, over several years! I have no idea how young or old this actress is who Les just hate-masturbated to on the plane, and it’s true that Hollywood casts actresses young, but I’m pretty sure Les would only be satisfied without someone the age he is now, and here’s the thing, Les: Lisa stopped aging when she died.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/19/20

Ha ha, that got kind of dark, didn’t it? Well, suck it up, times are dark. Look, here’s the grimmest, realest Hagar the Horrible ever written!

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Mary Worth, 6/17/20

OK, so here’s what’s happened since we last checked in with Mary Worth: Lyle showed up with Madi, who predictably refused to make eye contact with Saul and just kept staring at her phone, and Saul suggested they all have dinner or something, but Lyle was like, no, sorry, gotta run, Venezuela’s not gonna coup itself! Anyway, I am absolutely loving — loving — Saul’s attempt to do a tough-guy face in panel one here. “Welp, I guess you’re just going to leave your daughter [I assume she’s his daughter? I actually don’t think they’ve made that explicit] with me for three months, after having spent less than five minutes here and made no attempt to ease the process of us getting to know each other or giving me, a man who’s never raised children, any kind of advice on what she’ll need or want, and it sounds like you’re not even going to be calling her while you’re away, but know this, Lyle: I will absolutely hold you to your vague promise to come back and collect your daughter [?], eventually.”

Mark Trail, 6/17/20

Good news, everyone! Andy smelled his way home! Also, did you know that Mark lives immediately next door to a whole different compound? Like my parents in suburban Buffalo have more space between their house and their neighbor’s than Mark does with his, and Mark is a weird hermit who lives in a national forest!

Funky Winkerbean, 6/17/20

More than 15 years ago, in a different, gentler age, this blog was called “I Read The Comics So You Don’t Have To.” And for years afterwards, I still saw that as my mission statement. But now, as the open-heartedness of youth has given way to the sourness of middle age, I have revised my thinking, and can best describe this blog’s mission as “If I Have To Think About The Sex Lives Of Funky Winkerbean Characters, Then So Do You.”

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Folks, before we jump into me making fun of today’s comics, I wanted point you to an article I wrote about comics elsewhere! I talked to a bunch of comics artists about their decision to acknowledge — or ignore — the coronvirus pandemic’s effect on our everday lives, and it turned into a meditation on how time and history intersect with the ephemeral medium of newspaper comics. Check it out over on Polygon!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/11/20

We’re fully a week and a half into this “Rex tells Sarah about how he and June met” storyline and June hasn’t even shown up yet, and are you feeling, bored, huh? Do you think this storyline, and Rex Morgan, M.D., storylines in general, move too slowly? Do you wish they’d just get to the point already? Well, it sounds like you’re a big whiny baby, and not a cool supergenius baby who can figure out how to blackmail people, but a dumb baby who had amnesia and now doesn’t know anything anymore. Do you want to be a dumb baby? Do you? No? Then shut up and let this strip set up “context” for the next six to eight weeks, buddy.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/11/20

OK, there are kids of suffering that awful characters in Funky Winkerbean endure that I like and kinds of suffering that I don’t, and I’ve decided that this is the first kind. Do it, Mason! Watch the special secret tapes that were emotionally intimate and only for Les! Strip-mine his personal agony to make a virtuous but unwatchable movie, which is worse than Les strip-mining it himself to produce three virtuous but unreadable books, for some reason! Use Lisa’s corpse to burnish your millionaire action hero status with some indie cred and further your career! Take no prisoners!

Beetle Bailey, 6/11/20

Plato’s “Science Facts” pamphlet is four pages long, including the cover, which is an otherwise blank page that just has “Science Facts” written on it. This is one the saddest things I’ve ever seen.