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Funky Winkerbean, 5/2/20

Ha ha ha, a sequel? Do these crass Hollywood schlockmeisters want Les to taint the precious, pure story of his dead wife Lisa with a [shudder of disgust] sequel? What would such a sequel even be about? Maybe finding a new love and a new life with his second wife? Absurd. Lisa is the only one worthy of installments in this series, and once Lisa’s dead, there’s nobody else a movie in the world Les is conjuring could be about. So, in other words: does Les have any other ideas for these guys? Anything else new or interesting to say, other than what he’s been saying for the past twenty years? The answer is a very, very hard no.

Mary Worth, 5/2/20

The thing to remember about Jared’s first storyline with Dawn from a couple years ago was that he’s a clumsy, self-loathing dork who absolutely seethes with resentment whenever anyone socially skilled or attractive talks to Dawn, so he’s gonna fuckin’ hate it when Dawn announces that they’re going to take a trip to France together in the summer to hang out with Hugo and his new girlfriend, and that’s even before Hugo inevitably suggests a partner swap.

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Beetle Bailey, 5/1/20

What’s your favorite incredibly wrong-headed aspect of this strip? For many, it will be the misguided implication that the cultural triumph of “nerd”-focused media like superhero franchises has upended society’s assessment of what is and isn’t sexually desirable. But I personally am a big fan of Killer wearing a v-neck sweater that somehow also has a shirt pocket on it.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/20

Speaking of the triumph of nerd-focused media, the Chinese market’s appetite for action flicks has definitely distorted the American film industry’s incentives in all sorts of troubling ways, but if that results in the new, gritty and realistic version of Lisa’s Story never getting off the ground, I for one am willing to forgive a lot.

Crock, 5/1/20

You know, sometimes you can actually forget that Crock is about a sadistic military officer who rules his colonial outpost as an unaccountable dictator, but then you get to a strip like today, when he forces one of his least favorite soldiers to eat a bowl full of rat meat.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/25/20

I think we’ve hit the uncanny valley segment of “comics do coronavirus,” where strips start throwing in catchphrases increasingly prevalent in public discourse to generate “ah ha, I recognize that” laugh-like reactions without actually trying to grapple with actual context these phrases come from. Thus you get Snuffy joking about the “stimulus package” the U.S. government is putting together to counteract the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic without anyone in Hootin’ Holler actually changing their behavior in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, Snuffy and his neighbors are the last people you’d expect to submit to the revenooers’ orders on how they should live their lives, but it’s also possible that they’re safe because the government long ago simply walled Hootin’ Holler off from the rest of the country, for their protection and for ours.

Daddy Daze, 4/25/20

I know I’ve already discussed my theory that the Daddy Daze coffeeshop strips are just updated versions of the bar strips in every other syndicated newspaper comic. Today’s offering features a very despondent Daddy Daze Daddy’s Goth Twin, guzzling his coffee as he contemplates a parenting style that, it seems clear, has already ruined his child’s life, and I’m basically assuming at this point that these strips were all drawn to take place in a bar and then forcibly changed to a coffee shop by editorial intervention.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/25/20

“Finally! White people are back on top in this town! White people with normal names, like ‘Mason Jarre!’”