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Heathcliff, 5/27/13

The best thing about this Heathcliff is that it almost isn’t creepy. Like, we could just take it at what I’m pretty sure is meant to be face value: that Heathcliff celebrates the beginning of hot grilling seasons by getting up on the roof and throwing a bunch of hot dog buns into the air. (Side note: Do some people say “hot dog buns” and others “hot dog rolls”? Is it a regional thing? Am I weird for thinking “rolls” sounds off?) That would be … well, weird, but not unsettling. But in fact it doesn’t look like Heathcliff has thrown them at all. His arms are barely extended, certainly not enough to explain how far up the hot dog buns are. No, it looks like he really did release them, and they’re flying. They’re alive. The bread flapping like wings. Rustling. Raining crumbs down below. They’re free. They’re free. They’re free. Heathcliff stands, arms extended. The hot dog buns swoop and dive and trill their little song to each other. Grilling season …. has begun.

Slylock Fox, 5/27/13

I’m not even going to get into the extremely dubious physics behind the solution to today’s puzzle because I can’t stop thinking about who drove that car into the water. Because somebody’s dead, right? That playful octopus pushed aside the bloated corpse of Harry Ape or Buford Bull or some other nefarious land-beast, or maybe the octopus is on top of the drowned evil-doer, just draping his tentacles all over the poor guy’s stiffened limbs. And let’s not even talk about the fact that Slylock knew all about this, used his ratiocination to get to the beach before the robber even did, probably watched the car go into the water, watched it sink under. “Let’s take a leisurely walk up the road and get some scuba equipment, Max,” he said. “Things ought to be nice and safe for us down there in about, say, an hour.”

Mark Trail 5/27/13

Guys I … I don’t think Cherry knows where her shoulder is

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Gil Thorp, 5/22/13

Guys, remember when Gil Thorp plots used to be bonkers crazy insane? Well, those days seem to be long past, which is why I have been studiously ignoring the spring plotline for months. Here it is, in a nutshell: baseball player Foley Knox is the son of a lawyer and an aspiring lawyer himself, and his lawyer dad is suing the gas station owner father of another player because some guy fell down while pumping gas there, and Foley is being a dick to the other kid about it, the end. The other kid and his dad are Chaldean Christians from Iraq, and it briefly looked like that was going to be a plot point somehow, but it was dropped in favor of a B plot involving Foley’s delusional romantic pursuit of Darby, the softball team’s star pitcher who has a toddler because she was previously teen pregnant, which was briefly controversial last spring. Anyway, today at last these plots collide when Foley decides to win the heart of his fair beloved by defeating her tortfeasor in judicial combat! This will also fail.

Wizard of Id, 5/22/13

So Wizard of Id, which is usually not funny on any level, actually made me laugh in two distinct ways today? WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO? I appreciate the fact that the joke hinges on grammatical ambiguity — haha, you think “[a]re protesting” is a verb in the progressive aspect, but in fact “protesting” is a deverbal adjective modifying “drones”! But what really made me laugh was the sign that just says “NOT COOL”. It’s a sign that you can use at any protest and one that lets everyone know that, yeah, you’re politically engaged, but you’re also pretty chill.

Mark Trail, 5/22/13

Meanwhile, the AMAZING FOREST BEAR INFERNO is still going on in Mark Trail! I’m a little confused by the positions of everybody/thing in this comic, but, comparing the perspective in the two panels, if Cherry and Shelly are looking at the water and the tree is directly behind them, won’t they have to run sort of towards the bears in order to get to the tree? I mean, I get that they’re right on the shore and their options are limited. This is like the time my wife and I were in Stanley Park in Vancouver, and these raccoons emerged from the trees and wanted to go drink from the pond we were standing at the edge of, and they were heading right for us and didn’t seem scared of us at all, and we were in their way but there was no way for us to go that didn’t involve getting closer to them at least to start. Sure, they were raccoons, not bears, and nothing was on fire, but I don’t believe I ever pretended to be a brave man.

Heathcliff, 5/22/13

One of the things I didn’t expect when I recently worked Heathcliff into my comics rotation was the feature’s not infrequent expeditions into the inscrutable. I like this one, even if I don’t really understand it. Ha ha, Heathcliff is voyaging home via hot air balloon! It’s whimsical!

Pluggers, 5/22/13

Yes, I’m sure the automated recording that delivered this platitude really feels bad after this sick burn! Basically, pluggers have very little control over their own lives and will sullenly lash out at anybody about it, whether they can hear them lashing out or not.

Family Circus, 5/22/13

“Billy and Dolly and Daddy and PJ are in the basement, right, Mommy? With all the sand? And time’s up for them? They won’t bother us ever again? Oh, also, this hourglass ran out, I guess.”

Spider-Man, 5/22/13

Spider-Man’s high school science teacher always hoped he’d kill or terribly injure himself in a lab accident.

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Spider-Man, 5/20/13

Sometimes when I take a little break from blogging, I wonder if the comics landscape will have shifted in my absence, leaving me stranded in a world I no longer understand. Fortunately, the newspaper comics industry is incredibly ossified, so I usually have no worries on that score. For instance, Spider-Man is engaged in a battle against a super-villain, and is losing, pathetically, and in need of a bailout from another, better superhero! No changes here! Kingpin is at least being innovative in his attack on Spider-Man: he’s using a laser beam hidden in his cane to defeat the wall-crawler, rather than just bludgeoning him with the cane itself, which would surely have been just as effective and probably a lot more efficient, if less artful.

Apartment 3-G, 5/20/13

Lu Ann clearly did not take the opportunity afforded by my absence to become less of a moron. At first I was confused as to why she would be surprised that Greg, Margo’s client/love slave, was James Bond — surely this isn’t a secret to anyone at this point? But then I saw how she apparently shouldered Margo aside and grabbed hold of her freakishly huge laptop, so now I assume she thinks Greg is trapped inside the screen. “Whoa — is that Greg?! Greg, don’t worry, we’ll get Superman to free you from the Phantom Zone!”

Heathcliff, 5/20/13

It there’s one thing we can expect from our longrunning legacy comics, it’s that they do a good job of illustrating hoary old humor tropes. Haha, Heathcliff’s owner-boy’s trumpet (?) playing is terrible, resembling a bellow made by a yak! Specifically, a mating bellow made by a yak. Check out the hearts hovering above that yak’s head. It’s attracting yaks … for sex.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/20/13

Like many isolated, desperately poor, undergoverned enclaves, Hootin’ Holler can erupt in vicious, arbitrary violence at any moment.