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Hi and Lois, 11/25/19

The fact that Lois’s dark shadow looms menacingly in panel two here really makes this comic. Some girls liked the beard, some didn’t. Some told Hi in no uncertain terms that the beard was forbidden, that even a hint of it had to be shorn off the moment it appeared, and that they would be watching, always watching, to make sure he would do as he was told. Now, some boys might not like that sort of arrangement, but as the bedroom eyes Hi is flashing at his wife’s silhouette clearly indicate, Hi is not one of those boys.

Shoe, 11/25/19

The Treetops Tattler, like many local papers, has a small staff that does double and triple duty, and it’s not unheard of to see them dedicating some column inches to arts coverage. Usually it’s the Perfesser who writes the reviews, though clearly that’s a conflict of interest here; it’s a little strange to see the editor in chief take on the role, but I guess he couldn’t pass up the chance to slam on his only full-time employee in a public forum.

Mary Worth, 11/25/19

Man, I barely have time for Mary still somehow being on Team Wilbur or for the delicious shade dished out by our narration box, because I think I now can’t avoid the conclusion that many of you commenters reached months ago: Iris is tired all the time not but because she and Zak are fucking all the time, but because she’s pregnant (which, to be clear, is still a result of the fucking, but it’s a second-order effect). The important question this raises: how will Wilbur react? Will this finally end his fixation on Iris, or will it send him even further into the deep end?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/25/19

I always had Snuffy pegged as a cynic, but it seems he still has a shred of idealism left — the belief that anyone, no matter how humble their circumstances, is entitled to the full protection of America’s laws and can seek redress in the courts if their rights are violated. But Sheriff Tait, the only representative of that distant government, quickly disabuses him of that notion: Snuffy is stuck here in Hootin’ Holler, in more ways than one.

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Hi and Lois, 11/19/19

Yes, the joke is that “Ha ha, what if an … unlikely person used social media, wouldn’t that be something” (I guarantee that just about every garbageman in America has at least one social media account), but the real story here is Hi. Why does Hi feel compelled to come out at some ungodly hour of the morning to talk to the guys who pick up his trash? Isn’t the whole point that you put it out at the curb the night before and then they pick it up as they come by? Today he looks particularly miserable to have been forced by his pitiless Creator out of a nice warm bed to be the wordless sounding board for a terrible “PHONES, amiright folks” joke. It must be particularly galling that he could just look at this picture on Instagram whenever he wanted, at his leisure.

Sam and Silo, 11/19/19

Ha ha, the town’s only cops are sexually aggressively pursuing local women, as is their wont! “Like in a horror movie,” one of the women says, “but in this case, it’s true.” What a fun, whimsical strip!

Mary Worth, 11/19/19

The bouquet of roses is apparently Wilbur’s go-to “NOOOO, TAKE ME BACK” move, but this time around he decided to have them delivered rather than just attempting to ambush her with them — a wise move to avoid immediate, face-to-face, extremely funny disappointment.

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Hi and Lois, 10/16/19

Because I’m both a comics obsessive and a transit obsessive, I’m reasonably sure that the only time we’ve ever seen Hi on the subway was during this non-canon crossover event. That tells me that Hi is not on his typical commute, which I assume usually takes him along the auxiliary interstate highway that connects his pedestrian-hostile suburban subdivision to the pedestrian-hostile office park where Foofram Industries has its regional HQ. But not today. Today, Hi has abandoned his car in the parking lot of the outermost stop on the regional transit system and is heading into the city to vanish forever into his new life. This phone call will just serve to postpone by a few precious hours the moment when Lois realizes he’s not coming back and starts calling the cops.

Mary Worth, 10/16/19

Wow, remember back in the ’00s, when downtown Santa Royale was a bleak slum full of thugs and fallen women where Mary was terrified to venture? Well, as in many cities, it became an outpost of Santa Royale’s boho arts community, who were attracted by cheap rents and embraced the aesthetic of the grit they helped displace, leading normies to conclude that the neighborhood was “getting better,” with in turn brought us here, to the final stage of gentrification: tech millionaires living in huge townhomes that take up almost an entire lot, which they presumably demolished the Downtown Women’s Shelter to build.

Judge Parker, 10/16/19

“Then I remembered that we’re, like, bonkers rich! Remember that time we bought an RV on whim that we didn’t need or even really want? So yeah, go ahead and build like three more commercial structures on our vast compound if you want, whatever.”

Funky Winkerbean, 10/16/19

“That’s why I had Bull murdered and made it look like a suicide! Wait, did I say that part out loud?”