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Six Chix, 11/9/18

Normally, as you know, I do not come to praise the art in Six Chix. But I actually sort of like the depiction of the facial expression on the right here? Like it’s not what you’d call … technically skilled but I do think the crinkly smile captures the emotion that they’re trying to sell us. “Ha ha, yeah, I do sometimes do that! Ya gotta love life’s little foibles!”

Hagar the Horrible, 11/9/18

Actually, I think the pedant Hagar is hitting on/scamming out of liquor is a better example of the same thing. I love how he’s chinless in a way that if drawn realistically would be grotesque but here is kinda cute, and the way you draw a crooked frown on him is just by giving him a crooked upper lip dangling over the space where his lower jaw should be.

Spider-Man, 11/9/18

There’s a lot going on here, sartorially. Like, I know it’s kind of a trope for this strip by this point, but how comfortable can Peter’s spider-suit (the proportional suit … of a spider) really be? Would he really leave it on while lounging casually around the house, making phone calls? And then there’s MJ, who, if I’m following the sequence here correctly, was sound asleep in her hotel room in her sexy underwear, butt protruding gently towards the TV, when Peter called. But let’s not let this distract us from the important thing, which is that Peter called MJ to fess up that he accidentally destroyed the theater/their livelihood, and then she tells him she heard about it “collapsing” without mentioning his involvement, so he immediately changes the subject.

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Spider-Man, 10/30/18

The whole thing about Spider-Man is that, as a character, he’s supposed to be not some untouchable superhuman, but an ordinary guy with some extraordinary ability and also a lot of foibles — relatable, in other words. And sometimes it works! Like, in panel one, I definitely relate to chatting with someone that you’re trying to make friends with and then you accidentally blurt out some phrase like “you’ve got a lot on the ball!”, which is sort of like idiomatic English but in fact very much isn’t a thing anyone actually says. I’d be kicking myself over it for it for weeks, though; Spidey, on the other hand, thinks this is going great and is ready to confidently progress to the makeouts, which I don’t relate to at all.

Hagar the Horrible, 10/30/18

Ha ha, even after breaking up with an obvious creep, this woman can never escape him, because he’s managed to worm his way into her very mind and take away her ability to control her own body! Ahh, the funny pages, a pleasant place for innocent laffs that don’t as a rule center on nightmarish body horror.

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As foretold in prophecy, Unity Day 2018 is finally here! How are our most important cultural commenters, newspaper comic strips, dealing with the scourge of bullying? Honestly, not great!

Six Chix, 10/24/18

Speaking as someone who was a tremendous nerd as a child and also someone who loves etymology, I can assure you that there are few things more likely to earn a swift punch in the mouth than attempting to parry bullying by delving into some word origins. Also if you’re wondering how exactly bully came to change meanings in this way, it turns out that “a connecting sense between ‘lover’ and ‘ruffian’ might be ‘protector of a prostitute,’ which was one sense of bully (though it is not specifically attested until 1706).” So if our young victim here wanted to show off her bookish nature but avoid violent retribution, she might want to point out that by calling her tormenter a bully she’s also calling him a pimp, though this might not have the sting that she originally intended to deliver via etymological factoids and might instead just puff up the lad’s self-image.

Hagar the Horrible, 10/24/18

Anyway, we all know there’s only one kind of knowledge that bullies respect: knowledge about how to impose your will on others with violence.

Dennis the Menace, 10/24/18

Speaking of which, what’s the “Unity” of “Unity Day” stand for, anyway? Well, as today’s Dennis the Menace demonstrates, it means that smaller, weaker children should “unify” with one another and face down their lone larger tormenter, uniting into an angry mob that can tear their bullies limb from limb in an act of horrific orgiastic revenge.

Mary Worth, 10/24/18

Mary Worth, meanwhile, cuts through the feel-good bullshit to get at the real truth. You see, the whole point of this storyline is that if you bully a sad old man grieving his dead dog long enough, he’ll eventually relent and adopt another dog. And isn’t that a good thing? Why are you against bullying? Do you want sad, abused dogs to languish in shelters, forever?