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Six Chix, 3/23/22

One of those things that I never thought about until I learned it and then I thought about it all the time is that nowhere in the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme is it stated that he’s an egg, yet this is, universally, how we envision him. The main theory explaining this is that the rhyme was originally conceived of as a riddle: “humpty dumpty” was a general slang term of abuse for the short and squat, and so the joke was something like “Sure, seems weird that some little fat dude fell off the wall and broke into pieces … but what if we told you that actually, he was an egg? Eh?” Humor, notoriously, does not translate well across eras, and this is a pretty good example of that in play! You know what does play well across eras, though? Body horror! That’s why I’m wholeheartedly endorsing the Six Chix reboot of the Humpty Dumpty mythos, in which the Humpty Dumpty was deliberately taunted into hurling himself to a horrifying death so that his “inner bird” could be set free. Each bird in this grim world must convince other beings to die in order to perpetuate their species. It’s grim stuff!

Crankshaft, 3/23/22

If you “run” Montoni’s pizza through “the pipeline” (of your digestive tract), you’ll experience any number of unpleasant side effects, at both ends and the middle, which might in some sense be interpreted as “saluting”. Sorry you had to visualize that, but the motto of this blog long ago shifted from “I read the comics so you don’t have to” to “I involuntarily contemplated Ed Crankshaft’s pizza-farts so now you’re going to have to as well.”

Gil Thorp, 3/23/22

I know, in theory, that the teens in the first two panels have just finished a practice, and it’s only in the second panel that we’ve zoomed in enough to see that Parnit is sweating as one normally does after such exertion. But what it looks like is that Pranit has been told that he’ll be allowed back in the lineup after being suspended for his little “I accidentally became a bookie and hired an enforcer” oopsie and has immediately broken into a frenzied, manic sweat of excitement. He might have a problem not messing up between now and the game! Looks like he’s gonna mess up right there, to be honest!

Judge Parker and The Phantom, 3/23/22

Sorry I have not been keeping you up to date on Judge Parker and The Phantom, but I did want to point out that they’re both drawn by Mike Manley but written by two different people, and I would like to imagine that Manley enjoyed getting the scripts this week and finding out that he would get to do two explosions on the same day.

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Judge Parker, 11/20/21

So, see, the mayor has been launching a vendetta against Abbey, falsely accusing her of burning down her own B&B in both the court of public opinion and also the actual court system. But his deputy mayor has evidence (which the mayor doesn’t know about) that Abbey actually burned down her own B&B, and he’s going to blackmail Sam over it. Got it? Make sense to you? Me neither, but I’m willing to just move along to the “Sam physically assaults and yells at people” stage of proceedings.

Mary Worth, 11/20/21

Hey, remember how Mary was Libby’s original owner, but she had to pawn her off on Estelle because it turned out Dr. Jeff was allergic to cats? I feel like the fact that Estelle is a person who’s acquired a collection of other people’s unwanted pets is a pretty good fit that with the fact that she’s on the verge of becoming a person who, on multiple occasions, has taken Wilbur back as a romantic partner after he’s made an ass of himself in public. The only thing that can save her from this fate now is Mary smugly informing her that only one pet per apartment is allowed under Charterstone rules, leading to her being evicted and blessedly forced to leave town.

Hi and Lois, 11/20/21

Hey, Hi, you ever consider not being a huge fucking downer all the time? Just a thought!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/25/21

Do … do the good folks of Hootin’ Holler not know about air conditioning? The low-key single most important invention of the 20th century, which transformed the demographic geography of the United States? Do they not know that people are now free to move where they will in pursuit of good jobs, safe in the knowledge that they’ll be at least somewhat physically comfortable when they get there, working in factories or offices that would’ve simply been uninhabitable before the advent of artificial cooling? Do they not know they can leave?

Hi and Lois, 10/25/21

I really appreciate how wide-eyed Hi is with wonder in the second panel here. “Lois! I can’t feel them! I can’t feel anything! Now, what if there a way to do this … with my emotions.”

Judge Parker, 10/25/21

If Abbey gently resting her fingertips against her temple and muttering “I just can’t take it anymore, Sam” is coping, imagine what failing to cope would look like.