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Hagar the Horrible, 8/20/22

What do you think the origin is of “grotesquely exaggerated cleft chin” being a comics shorthand for “handsome”? Was it a Cary Grant thing? Or did Cary Grant’s fame emerge from the same early 20th century cultural/aesthetic mileu, chin-wise, that the comics are also drawing from? It’s been several generations since a big chin cleft has been considered stereotypically attractive in real life (I’m talking about society’s hegemonic ideal of handsomeness, here, I’m sure some of you freaks are personally horny for chin clefts and that’s fine) so the images in the comics have become increasingly detached from reality and anyway, Handsome Hans has an ass for a chin? C’mon, that’s clearly an ass. He has an ass for a chin!

Crock, 8/20/22

Speaking of asses, I spent way too long trying to figure out what’s going on with the statue in today’s Crock. Is he not wearing any clothes at all? Because if that were the case, I’m pretty sure we could see his dick in panel one. The piece of paper he’s holding is not adequately positioned to hide his dick! Or is he just wearing really tight pants, so tight we can see his buttcheeks? Or has the Lost Patrol sculpted a version of their hated leader who’s naked but lacking in genitals of any sort, as a cruel commentary on his impotent leadership? Never thought I’d spend a good portion of my day wondering “What’s the deal with this statute’s junk,” but I guess this is the life I’ve chosen for myself.

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Slylock Fox, 7/18/22

I honestly have quite a few questions about how realistic these Cyber-Weirdlies are. Like, can they talk? Do they hold up a conversation or just have an ELIZA-style set of canned phrases they use to respond to everything? How much autonomy do they have to move around? How docile was this bot as the duck-cop tied a single thin rope around him and then led him back to Slylock? Did the duck really think that master criminal and inventor Count Weirdly would allow himself to be so easily captured and served up on a platter to his archnemesis, Slylock Fox? I guess my questions are honestly much more about how dumb Officer Quackers here is, and also about why he’s been saddled with the name “Deputy Duck” when Officer Quackers is obviously much funnier.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/18/22

One definite sign I’m getting old is that I’m not a “car guy” by any means but every time I see a Cadillac built in the last 10 years I think “jeez, this looks like ass,” and when I see one of these “classic” Caddys from my youth like the one Tildy’s driving herself to the hospital in here, I’m like “yes, YES, this is what a Cadillac SHOULD look like,” even though, objectively, they look like ass as well. Still, if Tildy is a little more in touch with the nuances of her aging body than her husband and really is having a heart attack, I will shed a single tear to see this majestic vehicle swerve off the road into a tree.

Hagar the Horrible, 7/18/22

Hagar is right to be surprised in panel two. This is Viking Age! A boat like this should be an economic boon its owner, allowing them to either trade or raid depending on the military strength of the peoples on whose shore they arrive! If someone is just using a boat as an expensive hobby, then the world is truly changing and maybe Hagar isn’t going to be able to just murder people and steal their stuff for a living anymore.

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Gil Thorp, 6/22/22

As a certified coastal elitist, I usually take umbrage when someone says “Nobody cares about this outside your liberal bubble, poindexter,” but in this case, Gil is absolutely right: literally nobody cares about some years-ago plagiarism scandal from Gregg’s dad’s days writing for magazines, and in fact if you brought it up to most people, the most common response would be “What’s a magazine?” But Gil is also wrong about Gregg, whose main deal is that he’s going blind and has to wear a weird mask and occasionally pretend he has less control over his pitches than he actually does, which is … unusual, I guess, but certainly not special. I usually also take umbrage when someone says “Well, both sides are at fault, really,” but absolutely both these doofuses are incorrect in this conversation and I’m not afraid to say it.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/22/22

Speaking of being a coastal elitist, I’m always a little wary of declaring some phrase I encounter in the comics pages to be meaningless gibberish, because maybe it actually describes some well known cultural practice in “real America” that I’ve been too busy eating takeout Indian food and worshipping Satan to get hip to, and when it comes to things like a “unification display” I also have to keep in mind that, as someone in his middle age with no kids, I haven’t been to a big blow-out young person wedding in years, so who’s to say that “unification displays” aren’t a thing now? Well, a little Googling shows that they aren’t — the top hit for the phrase is a 2015 press release from the British Museum about four original Magna Carta manuscripts being displayed together for the first time, and it goes downhill from there — so this phrase actually belongs in same contemptible non-word zone as solo car date and vendo, except it has even less pizzaz. Anyway, ha ha, comic books! The characters in this strip simply cannot get enough of comic books, everybody! I’m not sure who the lady at the far right of this panel is, but it really tracks that even one-off characters who we’re never going to see again are willing to ooh and ahh over comic book-themed romantic gestures.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/22/22

Helga’s mother appears in this strip all the time so that the cast can perform tired mother-in-law jokes transposed to the Viking era, but I’m pretty sure we’ve never actually seen Hagar’s mother? Based on today’s strip, I’m guessing that Helga probably killed her, just like she’s about to kill Lute’s mother.