Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/28/17

Hmm, it looks like we’re going to be seeing Loweezy and Elviney trade irregularly metered rhyming lines on the subject of Loweezy’s diet over the next few days! I’m looking forward to them becoming increasingly desperate for rhymes the week drags on. “Do you think the diet’ll keep the’ pounds off in the future, Lo?” “I’ll get in trouble with th’ preacher for this, but I’m gonna turn to witchcraft and do some scryin’!”

Hi and Lois, 2/28/17

Meanwhile, Hi and Lois continues with its quest to show us the soul-crushing emptiness of modern white-collar suburban life. Yesterday the strip tackled work; today, it tackles sex, as Hi attempts to weave romance into his overburdened family schedule, much to everyone else’s disgust.

Phantom, 2/28/17

So the current Phantom storyline involves Orson, this beardy dude, who doesn’t think the Phantom is real, trying to convince the Bangallan government to put out a stamp about the Phantom legend, which stamp will probably be bought up by a small group of international collectors and make a tidy sum for the Bangallan treasury and be completely ignored by the world at large. And so the Phantom has … brutalized and kidnapped Orson? And revealed himself as actually existing? To stop the stamp from being produced? I’m pretty sure the Ghost-Who-Walks is also the Ghost-Who-Seriously-Overrates-The-Influence-Of-Stamps and also the Ghost-Who’s-Never-Heard-Of-The-Streisand-Effect.

Post Content

Hagar the Horrible, 2/27/17

Oh, man, it looks like the ongoing Hagar the Horrible exploration of the Norse transition from paganism to Christianity just got simultaneously more philosophical and more real. Because when you stop believing in a pantheon of fallible deities who fight amongst themselves and start worshipping an all-knowing, all-powerful, omnibenevolent creator God, you quickly run into the problem of theodicy: why do bad things happen to good people? How can a God capable of perfect action be displeased with, or even hostile towards, His own creations? We can see that some of the vikings are having an easier time reconciling these contradictions than others.

Hi and Lois 2/27/17

At the other end of the Walker-Browne Cinematic Universe’s timeline, our heroes are grappling with a decidedly more modern problem: an economic system that crushes the lives of its laborers so thoroughly that all they can do in their off time is more work. Any God is invisible to them behind so many layers of capitalist apparatus.

Mark Trail, 2/27/17

Look, Cherry, Mark was just thinking about wolves last week, OK??? He just … is it wrong for a guy to sit around spending his spare time thinking about wolves? And for one species of howling canid to prompt a pop-culture reference to another, closely related species????? Jeez, leave Mark alone, Cherry! (Real talk: Mark seems to be having some problems, and he better get his headspace in order before he becomes “Dirty”‘s prey.)

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/27/17

Ha ha, it’s funny because … Loweezy is losing weight because she’s clinically depressed? That … that’s not funny at all, actually.

Post Content

Spider-Man, 2/11/17

Oh, goodie, you guys: the current Spider-Man plot has advanced to the point where we at last are getting to enjoy some super-powered combat! By which I mean yesterday Ronan, the Accuser, smacked Spidey and Rocket around a little and now everyone’s just standing there jabbering at each other. Anyway, today we learn that our web-headed hero has a distinctive odor, at least to Rocket’s fine-tuned snout! What do you think Spider-Man smells like? Probably some combination of “I invented this high-performance, tight-fitting superhero costume but didn’t really think about making it machine washable and I don’t really get around to hand-washing it very often and also usually I wad it up into a little case immediately after engaging in strenuous superheroics” and failure, right?

Hi and Lois, 2/11/17

Sorry, Ditto! Your dad’s gonna be eating all the ice cream, lying on the couch for months on end, staying home from work on long-term disability because he tried to lift that enormously heavy generator by himself without bending his knees.

Mary Worth, 2/11/17

That vigorously spewing fountain thrusting upwards in the background as Zak and Iris press their bodies close for the last time? It represents their tears, y’all. Their tears. Get your minds out of the gutter.