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Luann, 8/25/14

Luann‘s gimmick is to tiptoe right up to an interesting plot development, pull out the rug, and slam the door on the reader’s nose. To pick just a few recent instances, will Luann and Quill get it on in the costume closet, with ensuing romantic complications? No. Did TJ finally cross the line, blowing up both his food truck and his friendship with Brad? Nope. Is Bernice’s new roommate Dez with all the ambiguously sketchy visitors a drug user? Nosiree. Will Brad and Toni any verb in the English language? Hahaha.

When every single plot is a cheat, you have to fall back on “character” to sustain interest. In Luann, “character” means Everybody Gets a Trait. Thus Stoic Brad, Nice Guy® Gunther, Vain Tiffany, Smart Bernice, Plucky Toni, Cynical NancyMom, Clueless FrankDad, Shady T.J., Outsider Knute, Noble Stereotype Delta, and Whoops! The music stopped, but there doesn’t seem to be a chair for Rosa — had her eye on the “Noble Stereotype” seat, I bet, but Delta’s pretty damn fast. Sorry, kiddo, you gave up Yale for this and didn’t even get the t-shirt.

“It’s a small world after all.”

And so to Peru, or at least the version of Peru that tarts up Lima’s J.W. Marriott hotel with accessories from Epcot Center to make it look more international-like.

Already we see signs of trouble – Gunther’s loving the tourist life but dreads the filthy Ebola-ridden cesspit he imagines this ‘clinic’ may be. Rosa’s bored because she’s traveling with Gunther, duh.

There’s a chance this mess could still work out. After all, Uncle’s outfit seems to be a little less the “impoverished villager pays with a chicken” type of clinic and a little more the “Managing Director jets off to Madrid for a ‘big conference’ on the NGO’s dime” type. So perhaps Gunther will find contentment in the clinic’s ultra-modern Histology Lab, quietly and expertly preparing tissue samples under bright lights amid purring coolers and gently gurgling circulators. Rosa, of course, will learn that the interns are all Yale grads who ridicule her polysyllabically as she mops. Ay, insuficientemente rápido de remanentes chica!

Hägar the Horrible, 8/25/14

Hägar instructs his men to mock their dying victims as a public-relations move. Makes you wonder what they were doing before.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/25/14

Coach Bull Bushka angles for a pity hire from a place called “DUI” in full view of his current employer, who has absolutely no problem with that. Or maybe Principal Green’s just in a good mood because Les is off today.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/19/14

Man, check out how depressed Lureen looks in this strip. An expression of lack of romantic interest in a particular gentleman shouldn’t be producing such distress, but her odd statement in panel two perhaps gives us a clue as to what’s going on here: she’s required to date every living Earth-dwelling human, no matter how objectionable, possibly as the result of some backwoods curse or hex.

Hagar the Horrible, 8/19/14

Sorry, Hagar! You chose to court a sea-creature based on her semi-human appearance, only to discover that she finds you distasteful! Meanwhile, Lucky Eddie is about to have enthusiastically consensual sexual relations with that lusty octopus. Eat your heart out indeed!

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/10/14

Good news, everyone! Despite the fact that Les holds everyone involved in the lowbrow and extremely lucrative (for him) process of turning Lisa’s Story into a cable movie in the deepest contempt, he’s still been able to give everyone little pick-me-ups and sage advice, like “it’s really all about acting,” so I think everything’s going to be OK. The best line here is clearly “Not in a weird way or anything,” because the best way to make sure an attractive actress knows you’ve been masturbating to the pictures on her website is to blurt out, without prompting, “NOT IN A WEIRD WAY OR ANYTHING” after telling her you’ve been looking at her website.

Crock, 8/10/14

Jules Schmeese is definitely one of the more hapless of the damned souls who inhabit Crock, always on the verge of being executed but never actually achieving the sweet release of death. Today we learn that not only is he somehow suspended in his final moments of mortal terror forever, but that, like Franz Kafka’s Josef K., he is not even permitted to know what he has done to merit his punishment.

Hagar the Horrible, 8/10/14

We already know that Hagar looks forward to the day when he will enter Valhalla. Apparently he’s concerned that his entourage in the afterlife won’t be adequate for his status, because he’s planning on taking his entire crew with him whether they want to go or not.

Heathcliff, 8/10/14

Heathcliff killed a shark with a fork, and now he’s going to eat it! That’s the joke, I think?