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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?

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Judge Parker, 7/11/23

Josh, the world cries out with one voice, how’s Sam and Abbey’s sex vacation going? Well, they just had just gotten out of cell phone coverage range when someone intentionally (?) rammed their car and ran off, leaving an unconscious toddler behind, who Sam and Abbey decided to carry with them on the miles-long walk to their cabin, where a landline awaited them. So, uh, the sex vacation was not going great, in other words! But good news: the little tyke woke up and, understandably, immediately started screaming and fleeing into the woods away from the total strangers who were taking her who knows where. So … sex vacation is back on? More on this story as it develops.

Gil Thorp, 7/11/23

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy (with Gil’s entire family no-shows at his big awards ceremony), the second time as farce (Gil’s kids there to cheer him on but Mimi off somewhere else, presumably banging her golf coach).

Mary Worth, 7/11/23

Now, you might think the implication here is that Mary was only one of many people who reported ambiguous but suspicious dog park adjacent behavior to the police, but let’s look at the facts. Mary is a careful and methodical person and she doesn’t pop a bunch of popcorn in order to gloatingly eat it in front of the 6 o’clock news on the off chance that one phone call did the trick. No, I think that just off panel, there are pile of burner phones and an electronic voice-altering gadget that helped her make sure that justice was done.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/11/23

Sorry to have misspoken last week: Rex and June’s loutish neighbor lost an eye to his post-July 4th fireworks, not a hand, and the whole family was too drunk to drive themselves to the hospital so Rex volunteered to do it. Anyway, Travis is “turning that frown upside down” by thinking about how understaffed emergency rooms are and all the delicious pills they probably just leave out unattended!

Dustin, 7/11/23

Man, this sort of dead-eyed literalism is more menacing than anything Dennis ever came up with. I guess it’s what you’d expect from a child who’s decided to make exactly one friend, and that friend is an adult, and that adult is Dustin.