Post Content

Gasoline Alley, 12/12/19

You know, I don’t talk about Gasoline Alley a ton here but I really have come to respect its utterly shambolic narrative style. Like, none of the other continuity strips are what you’d call tightly plotted, but Gasoline Alley lurches from event from to event without any clear sense of purpose or direction, much like real life itself, in a style normally associated with European arthouse movies from the ’70s. Over the last few … weeks? months? time has no meaning in this context, honestly, so let’s just say “the last little bit,” the town’s resident psychic physician’s assistant diagnosed the diner’s waitress with a heart condition so she had to take time off, and then a tough-talking sailor woman wandered through town and took the job, and then a train full of little kids on their way to see Santa broke down near the diner, so then they got Slim to dress up as Santa and come entertain them, and now it turns out that the little kids are … mostly assholes? And the tough-talking sailor woman, in her crusty, non-PC way, is threatening to murder them? Not really sure if this kid is claiming his father actually is a gamma radiation-mutated superhero or just a guy with a terrible anger problem, and honestly, in classic Gasoline Alley fashion, we’re probably never going to find out for sure! This is just one in series of vaguely connected things that happen, and will keep on happening, forever.

Crankshaft, 12/12/19

Crankshaft has been doing a whole series of strips this week about hawking your book at a book fair and nobody buying it, maybe because print media is dying or maybe just because nobody likes your book or maybe a little of both, and the whole thing has a definite “pulled from real life” vibe. Anyway, I’m a particular fan of today’s strip because of the Christmas decorations, which really create a mood, you know? These people could all be spending precious time around the holidays with their families, but instead they’re here, in what appears to be a hallway of some sort, staring at their phones, not selling books.

Post Content

Mary Worth, 11/29/19

Well, Iris has decided to consult a doctor for the symptoms she’s been experiencing. This guy kind of looks like Dr. Jeff, except younger, so maybe it’s supposed be Dr. Jeff’s son Dr. Drew, who two-time Dawn and got smacked around for it but hasn’t been seen since the new art team took over. Anyway, remember years ago in Funky Winkerbean when Les’s wife Lisa was told her cancer was in remission, but it really wasn’t and she was only told that as a result of some kind of paperwork mixup, and then she died? Well, it looks like Iris’s obvious pregnancy is currently being misdiagnosed as a typical case of old-broad-itis, which should lead to wacky results. As Marx put it in his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Gil Thorp, 11/29/19

Ha ha, Chet thought he could trust Marty Moon to help him with his plot to undermine Chance Macy and win his stepson’s love, but that’s too far even for Marty, so Marty narc’d him out, probably ruining his career and his marriage! Good times, good times. When the Mudlarks fail to make the playdowns yet again, Marty and Gil will be able to agree that at least nobody likes Chet anymore, so the season hasn’t been a total loss.

Gasoline Alley, 11/29/19

Is … is this really a great story? I know that the economic collapse of many small-town and mid-market media outlets has been devastating, removing an important check on political power in those communities, but I’m starting to wonder if they maybe deserved it.

Post Content

Crankshaft, 11/27/19

What do you all think the more likely scenario is here: That Ed Crankshaft the guy and/or Crankshaft the comic strip are making some kind of commentary about how nobody goes to the gym, and so “gym-packed” means that a gym is empty? Or was this just yet another out of the bottomless well of Meaningless Crankshaft Malapropos, but when it came time to do the art it turned out that drawing an actual crowded gym was hard, so, screw it, who cares, it’s just Crankshaft, you know? It’s just Crankshaft.

Gasoline Alley, 11/27/19

“Naturally! Who else? I definitely didn’t mean adults obsessed with conquering the aging process, who are travelling by train to S.A.N.T.A. (the Senescence Attenuation Network’s Transformation Area) where they’ll be injected with the so-called ‘Benjamin Button serum’ produced by extracting the vital fluids from these children! Why would you even think that? [nervous laughter]”

Dick Tracy, 11/27/19

HEY GUYS WERE YOU AWARE THAT THERE WAS ANOTHER DICK TRACY VILLAIN NAMED “SPLITFACE”?

BUT THIS ISN’T HIM

THIS GUY USED TO BE NAMED “HAF AND HAF”

WE’RE GOING TO KEEP TELLING YOU OVER AND OVER UNTIL YOU FIGURE IT OUT

GET WITH THE FRICKIN’ PROGRAM OK