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Crock, 7/27/23

The thing about ladies’ butts is that the societal consensus on their optimal size has waxed and waned over the years: some decades have extolled the skinny, while in other eras big and round has been the way to go. This is a particular dilemma in the universe of Crock. When exactly was this strip published? When is any of the action supposed to be taking place? I don’t know and my guess is that the characters don’t either, so “compared to what?” is a legitimate question.

Judge Parker, 7/27/23

You and I both knew in our heart of hearts that the newspaper funny pages were never going to show a guy getting torn to pieces by a bear, not even if we’ve already established that guy as a child kidnapper, so we should appreciate what we do get today, which is seeing his screams of agony coming in from just off-panel. Then, to chill us out a bit, we smash cut to Sophie and Marie watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, I’m pretty sure, but Sophie’s not even paying attention because she’s looking at her phone. Kids today! With their phones and getting kidnapped by guys who get killed by bears and such!

The Lockhorns, 7/27/23

A thing I love about The Lockhorns is that in most panel, no matter what the “joke” is, one or both of the title characters looks like they want to die. Like this is just a dumb and overdone bit of wordplay on “continental,” they didn’t need to go so hard, but Leroy is looking at those pancakes like he’s contemplating whether he can deliberately choke himself to death on them, and I respect that artistic choice so much.

Dennis the Menace, 7/27/23

It’s true: Mr. Wilson spent much of his tween years as a child soldier in the bloody spasms of civil conflict that wracked the Congo after Belgium pulled its colonial administration out in 1960. The experience has left him with terrible emotional scars that he cannot bring himself to talk about. His outfit today is unrelated.

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Six Chix, 7/21/23

When I started this blog [mumblety mumble] years ago, there was still a prevailing ethos that comics strips were, in fact, for kids, even though most of their readers were actually adults, and part of my job, as the Comics Curmudgeon, was to bring to your attention the occasional instance when a comic strip was very obviously not for kids. Anyway, today it’s [mumblety mumble] years later, and that prevailing ethos has largely been cast aside, and not replaced with anything yet because the old world is dying and the new world is struggling to be born, but we’re all gonna sort of keep on going in the meantime, so I’m still going to use this blog to tell you when a newspaper comic strip does a joke about piss stuff. “What’s wrong with me?” wonders a tree sadly, watching all its fellow trees getting pissed on. Not sure if we’re supposed to think the other trees are also sapient or, if they are, whether or not they’re into getting pissed on. Look at all that piss, though! They really just went and … drew it, huh.

Judge Parker, 7/21/23

I’ve definitely criticized post-Woody Wilson Judge Parker of being pretty low stakes, so I have to give the strip credit for really jacking up the stakes in an almost logarithmic progression lately. Oh, did Sam and Abbey’s sex vacation get derailed when someone rammed into their car? Oh, did the person who rammed them abandon a small child? Did the child’s kidnapper show up with a knife? Oh, are all of them going to get mauled to death by a fucking bear???? Tune in tomorrow when all life on Earth is wiped out by a massive asteroid impact, probably!

Dennis the Menace, 7/21/23

Dennis would certainly recognize a picture of the mustachio’d grandfather we see visiting fairly regularly, so I assume that that’s Alice’s dad, and Henry is showing Dennis a photo of his dad, who is dead, which makes this one of the most menacing Dennis responses I think I’ve ever seen.

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Gasoline Alley, 7/19/23

I always respect Gasoline Alley’s commitment to doing shambolic, pointless plots that seem to go on forever, and we’re in the middle of a real stemwinder at the moment. To recap: Rufus is still in the hospital due to his head injury, still has amnesia, and is still showing more skin than I’m comfortable with. Today’s strip is noteworthy because of the comical terror in which these two rustics regard the Automatic Robotic Techno-nurse. This can’t be the result of sheer ludditism, since they’ve taken technological advances like CAT scans in stride in the course of their medical adventure, so it must be that they’re shocked that anyone would go through the trouble of building a humanoid robot that carries pills and decanters in its hands for this purpose, when an automated and wheeled cart would be much more efficient and easier to implement.

Dick Tracy, 7/19/23

Speaking of plots that go nowhere, Dick Tracy is in the middle of a plot that has been going so nowhere that I haven’t bothered featuring it here much, though I will tell you that there was a whole week where Dick became obsessed with a chunk of plaster found at a crime scene that was from a very specific Art Deco decoration on the front of a very specific building. Anyway, you’d think a guy that much into historic urban architecture would at least consider that the story behind moving trucks showing up in a largely abandoned warehouse district might be “gentrification” rather than “crime.”

Judge Parker, 7/19/23

Good news, everyone! A sweaty guy in a suit holding a surprisingly large knife has shown up in Judge Parker, and there’s never been a soap opera plot that couldn’t benefit from that kind of development.

Gil Thorp, 7/19/23

Gil Thorp has an intermittent tradition of doing wacky summer plotlines like “Coach Kaz becomes a rock star’s bodyguard” or “Marty Moon gets grifted at golf” or “Gil does a charity pro wrestling match with a guy whose angle is that he has Alzheimers.” But will any of those be able to hold a candle to 2023’s Summer Of The Throuple?