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Spider-Man, 9/12/18

God bless this hilarious audience of nogoodniks, who are already extremely riled up and shaking their fists in rage before the meeting has even begun! I’m particularly intrigued by the phrase “so-called crime summit”: is our bespectacled thug questioning the very nature of “crime,” rejecting a label placed on his business activities by a government apparatus for which he holds no respect? Or is he disputing the term “summit,” since the theater setting seems to imply less a meeting of equals seeking consensus than a scenario where Kingpin and Golden Claw impose their will from the stage on a passive “audience” of lesser criminals?

Hi and Lois, 9/12/18

There are, in the end, two types of men in the world, and you have to decide which one you want to be. Are you a Thirsty, who’s so determined to assert his autonomy from his wife that he deliberately gorges himself at lunch to the point of nausea, sky-high cholesterol be damned? Or are you a Hi, who obediently sips a cup of broth for lunch so that by the time he gets home his stomach is empty, so empty, and he can properly stuff himself to bursting under his wife’s cruel, stern eye, asking “Now is dinner finished?” before each course only to be told “Dinner is finished when I say it’s finished.”

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Hi and Lois, 9/2/18

Can you imagine if your all-powerful creator diety died? Imagine the sense of mourning, of emptiness that would hang over your whole universe in that scenario. And then you’d have to contemplate the possibility that it was only His constant new acts of creation that kept the world running, and that without that impetus maybe the tide would beging to shift the other way. “Old cartoonists never die. They just erase away,” says Lois, worrying that perhaps her own reality will soon begin to erase itself, removing her and everyone she loves from existence.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/2/18

Well, it looks like Millie was just waiting for one last visit from her high school boyfriend so he knew how hot she was before finally dropping dead. At least she died as she lived: slinging cheap food to ungrateful patrons at a mediocre diner, and dreaming of the day, just around the corner but always out of reach, when she’d be able to retire.

Mary Worth, 9/2/18

Oh, man, it’s a mean old man and his angry dog! He actively refuses Mary’s gift of food! This is going to be her greatest challenge yet! Watch out, Mr. Wynter: your life is about to have the the hell meddled out it. Dead wife? Estranged kids? Prickly exterior makes it hard to make friends? Mary will find your trauma and will force you to process it emotionally until you are fixed.

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Hi and Lois, 8/31/18

I am living for the disappointed looks on the faces of Hi and Other Friend Of Thirsty And Possibly Hi in panel two here! While both of these gentlemen wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to horn in on their wives’ bonding time with their female friends, they had always been jealous of their book clubs, and when they got Thirsty’s unexpected invite, they were thrilled: an intellectual salon, a meeting of the minds that would deepen their male bonds! But no, it’s just another opportunity to do low-level crimes, and lose money to boot. Maybe the two of them should start their own book club. It’s not too late, fellas! Overcome that masculine reserve and live your literary dreams!

Mark Trail, 8/31/18

Some of you have wondered: in these difficult times for journalism, how can Woods and Wildlife Magazine possibly keep up its expensive longform niche journalism, paying for long trips overseas for its writers (along with their outrageous travel insurance premiums) and still making rent on its posh Manhattan offices even as advertising rates plummet? Well, the answer is that while Americans may be spending their days endlessly noodling around on social media, consumers in the Latin American market still hunger for fascinating stories about our natural world (World War I era airplanes count as part of the natural world if they fall into a sinkhole).

Family Circus, 8/31/18

Finally, I’ve acknowledged to myself that making a joke about the Keane Kids as part of a horrifying, incestous planned breeding program to create some kind of genetically pure “holy race” is both distasteful and also doesn’t have much support in the comic itself. Now to take a big sip of coffee and read today’s Family Circus!

Funky Winkerbean, 8/31/18

Ha ha, if an absolutely furious old man is screaming abuse at people in the form of unfunny wordplay, it must be Funky Winkerbean!