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Hagar the Horrible, 2/27/17

Oh, man, it looks like the ongoing Hagar the Horrible exploration of the Norse transition from paganism to Christianity just got simultaneously more philosophical and more real. Because when you stop believing in a pantheon of fallible deities who fight amongst themselves and start worshipping an all-knowing, all-powerful, omnibenevolent creator God, you quickly run into the problem of theodicy: why do bad things happen to good people? How can a God capable of perfect action be displeased with, or even hostile towards, His own creations? We can see that some of the vikings are having an easier time reconciling these contradictions than others.

Hi and Lois 2/27/17

At the other end of the Walker-Browne Cinematic Universe’s timeline, our heroes are grappling with a decidedly more modern problem: an economic system that crushes the lives of its laborers so thoroughly that all they can do in their off time is more work. Any God is invisible to them behind so many layers of capitalist apparatus.

Mark Trail, 2/27/17

Look, Cherry, Mark was just thinking about wolves last week, OK??? He just … is it wrong for a guy to sit around spending his spare time thinking about wolves? And for one species of howling canid to prompt a pop-culture reference to another, closely related species????? Jeez, leave Mark alone, Cherry! (Real talk: Mark seems to be having some problems, and he better get his headspace in order before he becomes “Dirty”‘s prey.)

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/27/17

Ha ha, it’s funny because … Loweezy is losing weight because she’s clinically depressed? That … that’s not funny at all, actually.

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Hagar the Horrible, 2/26/17

The half-fish sea-witches who live just offshore from Hagar’s village have a ravenous hunger for human flesh. There’s only one defense against them: because they are immortal, the sight or smell of any dead thing repulses them and keeps them at bay. Hagar is suffering here to defend his people!

Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/26/17

In the grinding rural poverty of Hootin’ Holler, even the children’s games stick close to the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Crankshaft, 2/26/17

As well you shouldn’t, Crankshaft! Literally everybody dislikes you!

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(Hey! What’s with the new site design? What’s this business in the top menu about “membership?” Get all the info here!)

Hagar the Horrible, 1/9/17

The period in Western European history between the fifth and tenth century are often called the “Dark Ages,” though contemporary historians tend to push back on this. It’s true that social organization changed radically, in many ways for the more chaotic and violent, after the fall of Rome, and much of philosophy was lost to the Latin world; but technology continued advancing, with the stirrup and the horse collar only appearing in this period. Still, advanced concrete really was one of those things that people forgot how to make, vanishing from the West in the 5th century and not reappearing until the 14th, which makes this strip anachronistic. Maybe the newfangled poured stone was a (re)invention by this particular craftsman, who found himself promptly murdered by the local viking chieftain for annoying him, leaving Europe concreteless for hundreds of years to come.

This strip is also a great example of how character design can really screw with a visual gag. Lucky Eddy always wears a long robe (cloak?) that goes down to his ankles; logically it should have dragged through the wet cement, but instead it looks like he’s hopping and making cloak-sized holes.

Dennis the Menace, 1/9/17

In our previous discussion of “just what religion are the Mitchells, anyway?”, we settled on high church Episcopalian, probably, and I dunno, maybe this is a cultural stereotype, but I don’t think the Episcopalians are gonna be that upset by the idea of Heaven as having an eternal open bar.

Mary Worth, 1/9/17

Does Mary Worth understand sarcasm? Does she know that “Good luck with that!” is usually sarcastic? I can never tell with her. Anyway, I too wish Iris a non-sarcastic good luck! Good luck not thinking about Wilbur at all! It’s easy if you try!