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Six Chix, 6/14/15

It seems that, while the tradition of paying children as they lose their baby teeth dates back to medieval times, the concept of an actual Tooth Fairy only dates to the early 20th century. I assumed based on this cartoon that the modern sanitized version had its origin in some terrifying German fairy tale involving a forest-sprite who came to the desperately poor at night and offered to give them food or sustenance if they agreed to let her wrench their teeth out of their jaw. Most versions of the Tooth Fairy legend (including the one in this very comic last month) have her as being very small, so presumably this is a normal human woman with a pair of fairy wings she bought at Party City and a sadistic hatred of the homeless.

Judge Parker, 6/14/15

Good new! Supercilious master of structural engineering Hank Tolling turns out to be a local boy! That means that, under the terms by which the Spencerberg region was enfeoffed to its ruling family, Neddy can kill or marry him at her whim, which will make it much easier for her to resolve their disputes.

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Mark Trail, 6/12/15

Oh, good news, everyone: Mark has recovered from his little getting-hit-with-a-tree incident, mostly. Though he does seem a little groggy, so maybe there’ll still be some fun with this. Amnesia, perhaps? Or maybe that was a radioactive tree, which will cause him to become Tree-Man, the man with the … proportional … powers of a tree? Whatever the case, I think we can all agree that it would be pretty hilarious if in panel two Mark said “Yeah … I’m OK!” and then just silently stood there, hand on his knee, for a full minute, letting the water drip off of him.

Judge Parker, 6/12/15

Man, Marie sure does take an unseemly interest in people’s sex lives, doesn’t she? “Yep, I’ll be gone tonight! Just completely out of your hair … out here in the guest house … in case you wanted to have any guests … like if you wanted Mark’s penis to be a ‘guest’ in your vagina … anyhoo, see you later!”

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Heathcliff, 6/8/15

The newspaper comics as a rule are neither created by nor designed to cater to young people, or people particularly up on pop culture ephemera. This is a medium that still thinks that an iPod is a cutting-edge piece of technology, and that jokes about black people hiding things in their afros is funny. Thus I’m pretty impressed by today’s “dad bod” reference in Heathcliff. This is a concept that I’m mostly aware of as a running joke on Twitter; the phrase appears to originate from a blog post by a Clemson college student from March 30, which went viral when linked to and gif-listicle-fied by Buzzfeed on April 30. Thus the idea has been in the public consciousness for barely a month, and when you factor in the lead time newspapers require, you realize that in comics time this joke was adapted into Heathcliff form in the equivalent of those incredibly tiny fractions of a second that can only be detected by incredibly precise atomic clocks. I was so taken aback by this cutting-edge joke, in fact, that I almost didn’t notice that … Heathcliff is drinking beer in this panel? Can cartoon cats do that? Drink beer? On the funny pages?

Judge Parker, 6/8/15

On a normal day in the comics, when a guy in a hardhat superciliously challenges a Spencer-Driver with a “unless, of course, you too have a master’s in structural engineering,” that would be the best thing that happened in Judge Parker that day. But not today. Not today, when the first-panel narration box dares to follow up the sentence “Rocky consents to investigating the viability of using cargo containers for interior offices” with an exclamation point. I like to imagine that there’s a real voiceover actor reading this, and they made him record this line again and again. “More emotion,” bellows the director, “more dynamism. Rocky’s investigating viability, for God’s sake.”

Apartment 3-G, 6/8/15

Hey so remember when Lu Ann was “at the hotel” then there was “suddenly a knock” and then Tommie appeared? Well, it seems … pretty clear that they’re back at the apartment today? And also Tommie has a different haircut. I’m real worried about Apartment 3-G, guys.

Mark Trail, 6/8/15

NO RUSTY DON’T TELL CHERRY WHERE BABIES COME FROM

she’s gonna have some questions for mark

tough questions

questions he does not want to answer