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Heathcliff, 6/17/25

There are few characters in the comics whose energies are so distinct from one another as Heathcliff and Wilbur Weston, despite the fact that they have remarkably similar body plans. Contrast today’s panel with Wilbur’s drawn-out, over-the-top fish funeral. Sure, Heathcliff mourns. You think he doesn’t mourn for that hot dog, lost forever to the bosom of the sea? But he does it with the sort of quiet dignity that Wilbur has never gotten within a mile of.

Crankshaft, 6/17/25

Crankshaft had two daughters: Pam, who he lives with, and Chris, who lives in the big city and who he visits every once in a while, presumably when he gets the sense that Pam might murder him if he doesn’t get out of town for a little bit. Anyway, you’d think living far away would allow Chris to develop a more independent personality, distinct from her family, but today we learn that making terrible, unfunny malaprops is a tragically genetic condition.

Shoe, 6/17/25

What I really like about this one is that Biz’s facial expression in panel two makes it very clear that he’s flirting.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/17/25

“So how does this work? Is a guy with calipers gonna come by and measure our skulls, or do I just jerk off into a cup?”

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Shoe, 5/23/25

This strip would be — well, not funny, exactly, but it would at least make some sort of sense if the Perfesser was married, which to the best of my knowledge (derived from a literal lifetime of reading the syndicated newspaper comic strip Shoe, oh my god I’ve wasted my life) he … isn’t? Unless his wife is unseen and unmentioned, and living in some room in his home that nobody goes into, which would make that already depressing house way way more depressing.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/23/25

TIRED: In the absence of defense attorneys, the government’s police power will range unchecked, with the regime being able to put disfavored individuals into prison on a whim

WIRED: “I would prefer not to go to jail” is an impulse for which a rational market exists, and if market participants are willing to expend resources to fulfill that desire, even in the absence of defense attorneys, someone will step up to provide a counterparty

Archie, 5/23/25

I love how shocked and indignant Pops looks in the third panel here. How can you young people just let your days slip away from you like this, without drinking in every minute of your wild and precious teenagerhood? You’ve got to live, kids, live!

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So okay, I’m going to pass by the opportunity for a vulgar chuckle from the previous post’s title, and jump right in medias res, the res being my bizarre obsession with Milton Caniff cheesecake as an art form in the funnies!

It’s a cliché that geeky teenage guys draw to create girls they’re too shy to meet. Their older selves fill the funnies, like those notebooks, with heroic-proportioned, implausibly-architected women draped and stretched to the limits of a censor’s patience. June, Edda, Blondie, Abbey, Trudi, . . . most of us can recite the list one-handed.

Cheesecake strips have a special tradition in military publications, possibly to “remind our boys what they’re fightin’ for” or maybe just because they appeal to the narrow reader demographic. Here’s Milton Caniff’s WWII contribution:

Male Call, 1943

This started as an unauthorized weekly spin-off from Caniff’s successful Terry and the Pirates, reformulated as Male Call when a paying T&P customer complained. Caniff, master of narrative compression, put a complete story arc in every strip. Link on over to Humorous Maximus to see the colorized banner. Really — do that. By the way, the indispensible Web source on this — and comic history in general — is Don Markstein’s Toonopedia™, with which you should plan to spend a rainy day sometime soon.

Sally Forth, 1978

And here’s a mind-bender: yes, this is Sally Forth, as she appeared in Overseas Weekly for years, starting in 1971 — check out Toonopedia for the full history, and a look at Sally’s nominally heterosexual but clearly underequipped male sidekick — an oddly apt foreshadowing. Sally Forth combines ’50’s gender roles with ’60’s (post-Annie Fanny) sexual tolerance and hallucinogenic plot elements that are all ’70’s.

Nancy, 8/13/07

Now, I know I can’t say “cheesecake” without somebody saying “Fritzi Ritz.” (Also Brandy from Frank Cho’s Liberty Meadows, but c’mon — that’s a zombie strip.) Far be it from me to disputare anybody’s gustum, but today’s Fritzi just doesn’t ring my bell — too heavily inked and larded up with sexual signifiers. And the constant “shout-outs” in this strip — three in the first panel — betray an author’s lack of confidence that the material can stand on its own.

In the ’50’s and pre-3G ’60’s, Aunt Fritzi was one of the few unattached young adults in comics (Mr. Tweedy was another). Her phone calls from suitors or preparations for an evening out gave a peek into a hidden world — now that was sexy.

Okay Okay Okay! So here’s the question, and I’m not the first to ask it: where are the hot guys in today’s newspaper comics? 9CL‘s Seth, got it. Surely not A3G‘s Alan/Eric/Gary/ . . . /Joe, or anybody in Mary Worth. There are plenty of examples from comic books, or Web comics, or in the past, but here? Now?

Has the TV sitcom big-slob-hot-chick trope invaded the funny pages? Or have we guys just lost it, and the comics reflect our diminished state? Let’s hear it!

— Uncle Lumpy