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Hagar the Horrible, 7/16/17

You know, somewhere among the many, many posts I’ve written about how Hagar the Horrible whitewashes the Vikings’ well-documented history as bloodthirsty murderers and thieves, you might start think that I’m missing the joke, which is that the whole point of Hagar’s pillaging strips is to contrast the general good nature of the characters with the actual historical carnage. I promise I’m not! I just think it’s funny to reverse it back to a more realistic configuration. I do sometimes wonder though if even the toilers down at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC have forgotten about the strip’s central conceit, but I take installments like today as pretty strong evidence that they haven’t. “Ha ha, the people who live here sure care about their landscaping! Let’s hack them to death with our swords, steal all their stuff, enslave their children, and burn their castle to the ground.”

Spider-Man, 7/16/17

Whew, you guys, Spider-Man was saved from unmasking by a combination of his spidey-sense and the quick thinking of his antagonist’s mom. It’s cool to see our noble hero being totally unable to let this thing go. “Will this curious little scamp grow up to be a murderous supervillain? Probably! Will I have to kill him to keep the world safe? Almost certainly! Can’t wait!”

Heathcliff, 7/16/17

As we’ve discussed, the venerable Heathcliff is a secret hotbed of surreal whimsy these days. Sometimes, though, it’s just jokes about birds shitting on you.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/16/17

“And I paid this nice lady with the camera-phone to record it! Just pretend she’s not here. But, you know, make sure she can always see your face.”

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Heathcliff, 7/15/13

Last week’s Heathcliff fish joke, while well within the expected whimsy-parameters of an inoffensive long-running legacy comic, still adhered to a basic logic, that logic being “cats like stealing fish, to eat.” Today’s panel provides something more in line with the profound weirdness bubbling below the surface of this feature’s modern iteration. Cats like fish, and I suppose cats like “playing with their food,” when their food is alive, but instead here the tenuous conceptual cat-fish connection produced a scenario where Heathcliff has a collection of fish of varying densities that he uses as athletic equipment. How dead are these fish, anyway? Are they still floppy? Do they hit the ball with a meaty smack, or have they started to rot, with contact with any projectile producing a cloud of scattered fish-flesh? Or … maybe, as I imagined last week, we’re meant to interpret the fish’s open eyes as meaning that it is still alive, which makes its bemused facial expression all the more hilarious. “Oh, now the cat’s using me as a baseball bat. That’s fantastic, just fantaaaastic.”

Archie, 7/15/13

The current run of Newspaper Archie Reruns From The Late ’90s Or Maybe The Early ’00s has actually involved a continuing plot that’s running over multiple weeks, which is kind of a new one, though not new in the sense of these strips actually being new, obviously. Anyway, Ronnie’s cruel father made her get a job! Obviously this job just became another venue for her long-running battle with Betty over Archie’s dubious charms. Which I guess is bumming him out? Look at how miserable Archie looks in panel two! I’ve never seen him sadder! And this is before he finds out that Veronica is stalking him with potentially malicious intent. Maybe he’s just sad that she gets access to all that delicious ice cream and he doesn’t?

Beetle Bailey, 7/15/13

As we already know, Camp Swampy exists in an pocket universe in which a single, awful day keeps on happening, forever. Dimly aware of the nightmarish nature of his reality, Beetle is attempting, through this conceptual artwork, to convey the horror of his damned existence.

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Spider-Man, 7/8/13

Good news, guys! Spider-Man’s ill-thought-out scheme to avoid having to make up some semi-believable explanation to a bored TSA agent about why he has a Spider-Man costume in luggage by wearing his Spider-Man costume and then making a dick of himself by climbing all over the walls has succeeded! Not because of any real heroics, or because he had a plan of any sort in place, obviously, but because somebody in the layer of Homeland Security bureaucracy that a TSA agent can reach via walky-talky told said TSA agent to “make this stop happening in such a way that I don’t have to ever hear about it again.” Still, Spidey is right to celebrate! Any conflict that doesn’t end with him accidentally knocking himself unconscious is a triumph!

Heathcliff, 7/8/13

OK, so I know fish don’t have eyelids and so their eyes appear to be staring at you in unblinking horror long after they’re dead, and that Heathcliff has stolen this dead fish and put a helmet it on it for joke/whimsy purposes as he razor-scooters off. But still, I choose to interpret the scene thusly: that fish is still alive, and is aware that he’s being carted for eating. His expression indicates not so much horror as a bemused resignation. “Oh, so I’m on a razor scooter now, with a cat. Greeeeaat.”

Mary Worth, 7/8/13

“I sure am enjoying this copy of Person magazine! It’s a great resource for finding out what sort of behavior patterns persons find normal. Plus, it’s a magazine that only persons read! Says so right in the name! Why, it certainly wouldn’t be purchased and read ostentatiously by some sort of space-lizard wearing a human meatsuit disguise! Ha ha!”

Six Chix, 7/8/13

Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that the Six Chix were competing amongst themselves to see who could create a cartoon with the most horribly mangled corpse in it. Explains a lot!