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Family Circus, 8/16/15

I like to think I’m a fairly modest person, but I will say this: because I’m both a tech writer and a comics blogger, nobody in the world is better equipped than I am to meticulously document when legacy syndicated newspaper comic strips make jokes about bitcoin. So here’s the Family Circus’s offering, coming in the wake of Six Chix and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. I think it’s pretty clear, based on our put-upon ice cream man’s outfit, that this is a reprinted comic from the ’70s or ’80s, which leaves the question open as to what sketchy financial instrument was originally used in that word bubble. Junk bonds? Pet rocks?

Judge Parker, 8/16/15

I freely admit to not understanding at all the financial details of the whatever business partnership Neddy has established with Rocky and Godiva, and one of the points I understand the very least is why all of the sudden Rocky started agreeing to pay for everything a while back. Something about that being the price for letting him publish his tell-all book about being married to Godiva? Anyway, I’d like to think that he and his checkbook’s abrupt departure corresponded exactly to the moment when retail sales of said book began. Next week may depict the most shocking event in the history of Judge Parker: a Spencer-Driver paying for something with her own money.

Momma, 8/16/15

I am not comfortable with that knowing, self-satisfied look MaryLou is giving us here. “What Momma doesn’t know is that I’m living with a man! Did you guess? A man? A man who wears a baseball hat and a tie, and leaves his sporting equipment scattered around the house? Get it? And we’re fucking? A man?”

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Mary Worth, 8/4/15

I’ve gone through a lot of fads and obsessions over the eleven (!) years I’ve been writing this blog, but Mary Worth is, and always has been, my lodestar. A quick peek at my stats shows that fully a quarter of the posts I’ve ever written discuss this strip. And you know what? It deserves all the attention. Today’s strip, in two efficient panels, encapsulates everything great about it: the overblown narration box, the crazy dutch angles in panel one as Ian pulls his hair out in consternation, and Toby’s twisted rage-face making her look like she’s planning on slitting Ian’s throat with that X-Acto knife. All this drama, of course, is turning on a relatively minor dispute, which could be resolved in one of several wholly acceptable ways — Ian could apologize and reschedule, Ian could cook something simple himself, Ian could explain his own error and ask the University Director what kind of takeout he’d like. But no, the Camerons have mutually and angrily decided to spin a terrible web of lies, in which Toby will attempt to pass off restaurant takeout food as her own, for literally no good reason at all. We can only hope this all unravels terribly and violently over dinner and Ian’s quest for academic advancement is ruined, ruined, but no matter what I am salivating to see what comes next, just as Ian probably is at the thought of takeout food.

Judge Parker, 8/4/15

Judge Parker’s joys are more subtle, but still worth savoring. Obviously when Sam’s close personal new friend (with whom he will never interact again, not once) gave him a skeet gun as a gift, it was a $20,000 Italian skeet gun. Unlike Sophie, I have no desire to Google anything about skeet gun models or their cost or nation of manufacture, so I’m just going to enjoy Sam’s rapid change of heart between panels one and two. “Hey, Sophie, this’ll be a chance for us to bond, and … wait, it cost how much? Yeah, keep your grubby hands off my high-quality, luxurious gun.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/4/15

Speaking of class war, I too like my whiskey neat, and one of my go-to jokes about that is to say “in a glass” when people ask me how I like it — a joke I will now immediately stop making after seeing an addled British aristocrat say it in a soap opera comic strip. I’m pretty sure our put-upon servant is wearing gloves so that he doesn’t leave prints when he eventually throttles Avery.

Hi and Lois, 8/4/15

Having Lois’s head stick appear in front of the bottom of Dot’s word balloon is an interesting visual choice, but the fact that said word balloon covers up the house shutters makes it look like Lois is sticking her head right through that window. Anyway, I’m focusing on this minutia because I don’t want to deal with the fact that Hi and Lois’s long marriage is riddled with lies and deception.

Pluggers, 8/4/15

GOD DAMN IT PLUGGERS I’M NOT A HUGE FAN OF THE BIG BANG THEORY OR ANYTHING BUT IT’S BEEN ONE OF THE HIGHEST-RATED SHOWS ON TV FOR EIGHT YEARS. THERE’S NO WAY IT CAN BE DESCRIBED AS “THE LATEST” ANYTHING. EIGHT GODDAMN YEAAAAARRRRRSSSS

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Judge Parker, 8/2/15

Oh, hey, remember like three and a half months ago (honestly, doesn’t it seem like longer? It seems like a lot longer) when Sam and Dalton where mortal enemies? Welp, now they’re best of friends, and Dalton is just handing over some firearms, as show of fealty. I’m gonna gloss over my coastal liberal anxieties about “licenses” and “permits” and that sort of jive and just focus on the fact that Judge Parker, the soap opera strip where literally nothing ever happens and it happens extremely slowly, is going to be the ultimate test of the Chekhov’s Gun principle. Perhaps it will need to be rewritten for this context to something like “If you hand someone a shotgun in the first act, it needs to go off sometime in the next seven to twelve months, or maybe never if you get distracted by something else.”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/2/15

Ha ha, it’s funny because Holly would love her husband more if he were the funny, charming young man he used to be instead of the bitter old grouch he’s become!