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Archive: Hagar the Horrible

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Panels on the brink of madness

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Slylock Fox, 11/15/09

Something seems seriously askew about the justice system in the world of Slylock Fox. Count Weirdly is the defendant in an elaborate trial with no fewer than five witnesses against him, yet we all know from experience that no matter what the verdict, he’ll be back in his critter-filled lair, plotting deranged, pointless evil, in only a few weeks’ time. It has to really make a lawfox like Slylock question the importance of his vocation, as he busies himself arranging the order in which his witnesses will testify in a needlessly complex fashion.

Meanwhile, in the Six Differences, our pastoral painter is about to learn about the drawbacks of photorealism the hard way, as a befuddled pooch, unable to differentiate between the representation and the represented, urinates all over his artwork.

Hagar the Horrible, 11/15/09

Yes, this bachelor rarely enjoys a home-cooked meal! He generally eats out, or eats a meal that he, uh, cooks at home. Oh, wait, I get it, “home-cooked” is code word for “cooked by a vagina-bearing individual!”

Panel from Blondie, 11/15/09

I found this panel strangely touching. While Dithers generally subjects Dagwood to nothing but persecution and abuse, when he finally admits to himself that his mind is going, he realizes that he’s driven away all intimate companionship with his bluster, and that Dagwood is the closest thing he has to a friend. However, subsequent panels completely fail to follow up on the notion of Dithers gradually going insane, and thus I quickly lost interest.

Panel from Crock, 11/15/09

Meanwhile, because the bottom half of the telephone handset depicted here seems to have vanished, when I first saw this panel I thought for a moment that Crock had decided to put a gun to his head and end both his life and the strip named after him. IF ONLY.

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Turns out it gets worse

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Mary Worth, 8/28/09

Is there anything worse than hearing Tobey natter on in barely coded terms about all the new sex positions she and Ian tried out in various dank castles across Scotland? Turns out there is, and it’s watching Dr. Jeff’s socially inept daughter make out with her ethics-challenged cop boyfriend, right there on the park bench where children can see it.

Momma, 8/28/09

Is there anything worse than Momma’s unsettlingly close relationship with her youngest son? Turns out there is, and it’s hearing her go on and on and on about how all these girls on the beaches today, showing so much skin, they’re just whores whores whores whores.

Family Circus, 8/28/09

Is there anything worse than seeing Jeffy’s pale, naked, fleshy thighs? Turns out there isn’t, so please, please, Mommy Keane, I don’t know what the insane nonsense coming out of Jeffy’s mouth is supposed to mean, but just make soothing noises that will get him to put his pants back on, OK?

Hagar the Horrible, 8/28/09

Looks like another harsh winter in Scandinavia has our favorite band of Viking raiders on the edge of starvation! Good times.

WHAT? AGAIN?: Hey, everyone, we’re going off on a weekend getaway, this weekend, so you may have to wait until Monday for your weekend comics. Then again, it’s supposed to rain, so you may get glum rainy-day vacation blogging. ONLY TIME WILL TELL! Tell then, why not play some Mark Trail Bingo, as developed by faithful reader Aviatrix? Faithful readers spacemika and bats :[ even made boards!

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The Comics Curmudgeon is famous!

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Pearls Before Swine, 8/12/09

Hello, anonymous rude denizens of the Internet! You have driven Stephan Pastis into his Internet Happy Box, so I hope you’re satisfied with yourselves. Actually, when people started emailing me about this strip this morning, I had a weird moment of déjà vu, as I thought this had run months ago. In fact, Stephan e-mailed it to me when he drew it, but that was back in April thanks to the high-tech distribution system that underlies the newspaper comics industry. Anyway, at the time I promised to rip him a new one when this came out, except he hasn’t been doing any of the terrible pun strips lately. SO UNTIL NEXT TIME PASTIS. You stay in that box just to be safe, though.

Baldo, 8/12/09

I went to college at Cornell, which is in the absolutely lovely (some might even say “gorges” HA IT’S A PUN GET IT) city of Ithaca, New York, which, despite being lovely, does not have much going for it in the way of malls. When you grow up going to Cheektowaga’s fabulous Walden Galleria, it’s a bit of a letdown doing all your enclosed chain-store shopping and food-court dining at the Pyramid Mall. This establishment appears to have since changed its name to “The Shops At Ithaca Mall,” which I find extremely amusing — oh, there are shops at the mall, you say? Anyway, I always used to mock the Pyramid Mall’s smallness by referring to it as the “Petite Mall”; I thought this was hilarious and everyone else was either more or less indifferent about it or thought it was actively offensive to people who have seizures. This is a roundabout way of saying that, why yes, I do feel validated by having essentially the same joke used in a Baldo strip 15 years later, thanks for asking!

I originally felt like there might be only about fifty-fifty chance that my terrible seizure joke was in fact the intended reading of this strip, but then I realized that there was no other obvious humor content here, so I figure that has to be what’s happening.

Hi and Lois, 8/12/09

It has not escaped my notice that quite a few of the recent Trixie-centered Hi and Lois strips have featured the pre-verbal infant girl wandering around outside apparently unattended. Maybe her parents are hoping that she’ll be adopted by a local wolfpack or some other band of animals and they’ll be relieved of responsibility for her; unfortunately, they hadn’t counted on the effectiveness with which the builders of their suburban subdivision cleared it of most wildlife. Trixie’s only option is to take up with a colony of frogs, which will go fine until she hits puberty and heads to the culvert under the arterial road with amplexus on her mind, only to be bitterly disappointed.

Hagar the Horrible, 8/12/09

Ha ha! He finds his wife’s mother so irritating that he’s going to hand her over to savages who will use her as a slave or a sacrifice to their pagan gods! MOTHERS IN LAW, am I right, people?