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Funky Winkerbean, 10/17/22

Look, I’m kind of face blind in real life, with actual human faces, and so since I’m dealing with a cartoon face here it’s wholly possibly I’m about to give you a big infodump about the wrong person, but I think that’s supposed to be Susan Smith, who in the long-ago pre-time-jump era of Funky Winkerbean was one of Les’s students, who developed romantic feelings for him somehow and then attempted suicide when he didn’t return them, and then years later came back to Westview herself as a teacher, and was of course enraptured by his prose about his dead wife Lisa, then eventually proclaimed her renewed love for him and there was briefly a moment where it seemed like she might be a romantic rival for Cayla (remember, this was a woman who tried to kill herself because she was so in love with Les when he was her teacher and she was a teenager! gross!) and despite some Three’s Company-style misunderstandings Cayla eventually won (“won”) and so Susan slipped quietly out of town. You’ll note in that last linked strip she says she’ll be “first in line to see” the Lisa’s Story movie if anything ever came of it, so maybe she was maybe one of the few who actually saw Marianne’s improbable Oscar-winning performance. On the other hand, the first panel here says that we’re flashing back to “several years ago,” and it definitely seems like she’s about to jump into the river, so maybe she never got to see the movie, a truly devastating final Les Moore-related tragedy in a life that was full of them.

Rhymes With Orange, 10/17/22

Ha ha, it’s funny because St. Peter, who was granted the keys to heaven by Jesus himself, wants to condemn this dog to eternal torture, in hell! Anyway, if you were wondering if you were still going to have to/be able to urinate in the afterlife, Rhymes With Orange is here to tell you: yes.

Judge Parker, 10/17/22

Oh, sorry, Judge Parker readers, we know you were all alarmed that something interesting and exciting seemed to be happening in this strip, but don’t worry: this week we’re getting back to the wall of emotionally fraught post-divorce scold-text that we know is the real reason you tune in every day.

The Lockhorns, 10/17/22

I love this panel because it tells us that there was a brief moment where Leroy experienced a moment of pure, childlike happiness. It was of course immediately followed by pain and trauma. This is the nature of the Lockhorns’ reality. I like the black eye he has because it lets us know that whatever he hit, he hit it face first.

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Marvin, 10/13/22

Well, Marvin’s been at it for 40 years now, with the “it” that it’s been “at” mostly consisting of poop/piss jokes about the title character, but also sometimes about the old people, dogs, and even passing birds in his life, but we’re finally reaching the final frontier of excretory narratives and getting into Jeff and Jenny’s bathroom situation. Specifically, we’re getting a week’s worth of “jokes” about how Jenny wants to get a bidet installed. I particularly enjoy her sly look in the final panel. “Padding out a list of things to talk about related to shitting until it’s not interesting anymore? That’s the syndicated comic strip Marvin’s turf, am I right, folks?”

Judge Parker, 10/13/22

“She doesn’t really know Steve particularly well or anything; we’re just at the stage of our divorce where I text her ‘thinking of you!’ and then send graphic crime scene photos.”

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Judge Parker, 10/6/22

Oh, were you excited about Sam’s old partner Steve making a triumphant return to the strip? Well, too bad, it’s been less than three weeks since he showed up and he’s already been brutally murdered by the crooked cops or the meth gangs or the crooked cops and the meth gangs working together, who can say. At least this means that Gloria, who was a very longtime beloved character in the strip until she quit her job as Sam’s secretary to skip town with Steve, might need to come crawling back to Sam for a job now that she’s tragically widowed! She’ll probably spend all her time being dramatically sad, which fits in with the current vibe of the strip, and also with the fact that Sam won’t be able to pay her very much.

Dick Tracy, 10/6/22

If you needed a single strip to explain current vibe of modern-day Dick Tracy, you can do worse than this one, in which a typical Tracy-style mutant gangster gets enlisted in a scheme to help his nephew land a part in a stage play about old-timey comic strips.