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Heathcliff, 1/28/15

I know, I just discussed this a few weeks ago, but for real, what is the deal with Heathcliff’s garbage? The city dump is filled entirely with great mounds of viscous, chunky brown trash-slurry, which no doubt quiver gelatinously and put out a horrifying odor that serves as a cat-aphrodisiac, much to the disgust of our garbage man and his cigar-sucking pal. Presumably this strip takes place only moments after they tossed an old tire and shopping cart up onto the goo-heap, in an attempt to pretend that what was happening on their watch wasn’t nightmarish and potentially human-extinction-causing.

Apartment 3-G, 1/28/15

Whew, Margo and her waitress are now … inside … somewhere … where there’s a bowl of pears and a TV and/or microwave and some coffee cups and hotel-quality art and dresser/cabinets of some sort and shall we call it a cafe? Sure, why not. Plus she’s finally got her breakfast. Eggs over easy, bacon, toast, pancakes, and apple pie, all mashed together into off-white chunks and put in a bowl, just the way she likes it!

Mary Worth, 1/28/15

OH SNAP SEAN JUST BACK-HANDEDLY PROPOSED TO HANNA!!!! This is probably the least romantic comics proposal since Anthony and Elizabeth came to the consensus that their friend-partnership should be upgraded way back in aught-eight. Nothing says “will you marry me” like “I know we haven’t talked about it yet but I’ve already been dreading what a pain in the ass our wedding is going to be”!

Dennis the Menace, 1/28/15

This mysterious woman with glasses and a clipboard, searching through kindergarten recess for signs of nonconformity, is the most menacing figure to appear in this strip in years.

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Heathcliff, 1/22/15

Comics are an incredibly conservative art form — not necessarily in a political or ideological sense, but in that they preserve visual tropes from the comics that current artists grew up with, thus sometimes presenting a world that vanished long ago. Thus, just as Dagwood’s suburban neighborhood is lousy with semi-feral dogs, so does Heathcliff view going to the bathroom as a primarily outside activity. This was the the norm for pet cats for most of their millennia-long period of domestication, but with the invention of clay kitty litter nearly 70 years ago, the idea of a cat doing its business inside the house became … well, significantly less worthy of a joke in a cat-themed comic, let’s just say that.

Funky Winkerbean and Dick Tracy, 1/22/15

The intrusion of Dick Tracy into the Funkyverse is having interesting effects on the Funky-space-time continuum. This reality has already been able to accommodate multiple discontinuous time-tracks, as seen by the apparent coexistence of the Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft timelines 10 years apart, with the one only occasionally bleeding into the other. But now with Dick and Sam in town, the timeline seems to have rapidly bifurcated into two closely linked parallel streams: in one, they crack vaguely wise at one another about comic books; in the other, they growl menacingly about how they totally have the right to just shoot this guy in the gut for “resisting arrest.”

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Slylock Fox, 1/14/15

I’ve spent literally years contemplating the strange, animal-dominated world of Slylock Fox, wondering about the terrible, transformative Event that separates it from ours. The lens I’ve seen things through has usually been scientific, but what if I should be thinking theologically instead? In the Genesis flood narrative, God famously promises Noah that He won’t destroy the world with a flood again, which is pretty specific and seems to leave some loopholes. The spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep” famously warns “God gave Noah the rainbow sign/ no more water/ the fire next time,” but God’s ways aren’t necessarily what we would expect. What if God chose to cleanse Earth of awful humanity by simply moving his favor down a rung to the animals, transforming them into beings capable of both moral reasoning and displacing us? If that was the goal — if Slylock Fox’s anthropomorphic beasts were an attempt at resetting the clock and creating a new Eden — then today’s strip reminds us that the fatal flaw, the indelible link between knowledge and sin, was baked into the design from the beginning.

Dick Tracy, 1/14/15

Aw, it’s funny because patriarchy dictates that detective prowess, like names, can only be transmitted down the male line! And also because none of these clowns are going to be the world’s greatest detective. Batman is the world’s greatest detective. Seriously, wouldn’t it be funny if they did a Batman movie where Batman was dressed up in a rubber bat suit but instead of punching bad guys and driving around in a tank-car he just looked for clues with a magnifying glass? It’d be a lot more entertaining than whatever they’ve got planned for Ben Affleck, that’s for sure.

Heathcliff, 1/14/15

Sure, you could look at this as Heathcliff just reusing the exact same joke twice in six days. But I choose to imagine that Heathcliff has been clawing viciously at the bars of the bird’s cage for nearly a week now, while his owner-family does nothing, leaving the bird to crazed with terror but still clinging to the household etiquette rules.

Apartment 3-G, 1/14/15

“Meanwhile, at two in the morning, after having been exiled from their home by Margo’s drug-powered mania, the girls wander the streets of Manhattan (?), talking to each other vaguely.”