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Gasoline Alley, 7/10/23

Obviously the art in Gasoline Alley is not what you call realistic — see for instance, Rufus’s whole [gestures vaguely at his grotesque face] deal. So while it’s common in real life for a loose-fitting hospital gown to slip down the shoulder of a supine patient still groggy from a head injury, in this context it’s a deliberate choice — a choice to make Rufus look sexy. I don’t care for it. Don’t care for it one bit!

Hagar the Horrible, 7/10/23

Oh, man, for all those years of Lucky Eddie dating a mermaid, he’s been saying “Oh, it’s not that weird, she still has a human top half, ha ha,” when all this time she’s just been a gateway romance leading to much more extreme sea life-fucking.

Gil Thorp, 7/10/23

Just a year ago, the Barajas Era of Gil Thorp began with Gil receiving the Jack Berrill Coach of the Year award. Now Year 2 B.E. is underway and Gil is … receiving the Jack Berrill Coach of the Year Award. What, you thought someone else was going to get an award named after the guy who created the strip? Get real.

Mary Worth, 7/10/23

Hey, everyone! Please add “carrying a leash while stepping into or out of a van” to the list of activities that could get you shot in the back while “resisting arrest.”

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Slylock Fox, 6/19/23

There was a truly incredible report a few months ago that featured extensive quotes from Taliban fighters who, after spending two decades waging a brutal and ultimately successful guerilla war against the mightiest superpower the world has ever known, found to their great surprise and disgust that running the country they had conquered mostly entailed sitting in an office building in Kabul and writing a lot of emails. This was what popped into my mind immediately upon reading this, and for some reason I find this a much funnier and more incongruous scenario than these sapient animals stealing jewels from each other or whatever. These creatures rose up and dispossessed the dominant species of planet Earth, in a paroxysm of genocidal violence, with the intention of building their own civilization in the ruins! And now they’re hacking into one another’s email accounts in order to frame each other for the crime of sending mean notes? The creatures looked from funny animal to man, and from man to funny animal, and from funny animal to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/19/23

I genuinely love how distressed this Hagar’s victim looks in panel two here. He lives in the civilized Carolingian realm, and probably he though that the days of violent Teutonic justice and trial by combat were over; now disputes are settled peacefully in accordance with civil law in the Emperor’s courts. But here are a couple violent men with weapons, sent (or so he thinks) by his wife’s vengeful family, here to make it very clear that, if you cross the wrong people, the old ways are still very much alive.

The Lockhorns, 6/19/23

I am frankly quite pleased to see the whole crypto/web3 scene go through multiple hype and boom/bust cycles to finally achieve its final form: something used in a syndicated newspaper comic strip as a well-understood shorthand for “a topic the most irritating person you meet at a party would talk to you about.” I only find this strip unbelievable because I am 100% certain that Leroy doesn’t need anything explained to him, because he has lost a substantial amount of money in crypto.

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Judge Parker, 6/15/23

Sorry you’re a coward, Sophie, but I actually would’ve liked to have seen the process by which Abbey decided to “get back out there” on the dating scene, and am definitely curious about which apps she used, considering that she’s the richest person in town and just had a very public failed campaign for mayor driven by revenge for having been falsely accused of burning down her own B&B. Was she on Raya, the dating app exclusively for celebs, rich people, and the celeb/rich people adjacent? Does Raya do local matches, or was she just getting a bunch of silver-haired finance guys in NYC or London? Did the pic where she “felt cute” look like this surreal nightmare?

The Lockhorns, 6/15/23

This joke is enh but I am very charmed by the way the bartender is smiling at that bottle in the background. “Oh, brown liquor,” he’s thinking to himself, “you and I have brought happiness to so many people! We’re a great team!”

Hagar the Horrible, 6/15/23

Wow, I’ve spent so much time on this blog trying to figure out where exactly in the late Carolingian era Hagar the Horrible takes place, only to learn today that Hagar’s civilization is actually part of the pre-Deluge world as described in the Book of Genesis! Definitely this is a society that is corrupt before God and filled with violence, so this adds up.