Post Content

Mary Worth, 6/1/21

Wow, huh, if you had asked me how this was going to go, I would’ve guessed, at various points over the course of this storyline, first “Ashlee becomes emotionally/sexually obsessed with Drew, who quickly tires of her”, then “Ashley becomes enraged at Drew when he fails to make her Instagram famous,” then finally “Ashlee hooks Drew for the long con.” But nope, it turns out that what Ashlee meant when she told Drew that “I recognize that face!” was that she had seen his Instagram feed and caught sight of his fancy Rolex in one of his selfies, so she used his pics and geotags to figure out where he might regularly stop to eat, got a job there to arrange the meeting, seduced him and set up a photoshoot, and casually nabbed the watch while he was distracted. Mission accomplished! The whole elaborate scheme was about the acquisition of a single expensive watch! Gotta say, I always appreciate it when Mary Worth zigs when I expect it to zag.

Judge Parker, 6/1/21

So there was a long stretch in this strip where Sophie’s whole deal was that she had PTSD due to her kidnapping and she couldn’t decide if she wanted to go to college, much to Abbey’s consternation, so she just hung around Cavelton and ran some failing mayoral campaigns instead. But now it’s Randy’s turn to be kidnapped, Sam’s hung up on it, and apparently Sophie’s been away at college for … months? And seems to be doing fine. “Wow,” she’s clearly thinking in panel two, “Maybe I should look into getting a job on campus during semester breaks from here on out.”

Post Content

Judge Parker, 5/8/21

You ever spend like 15 minutes of your day staring at a comic strip character’s ear? Zooming in on the image file while yelling “Enhance! ENHANCE!” at nobody in particular? No? You haven’t? That’s just me, a guy who started a comics blog on a lark in 2004 and this is my life now? Well, anyway, I’ve spent some time looking in April’s right ear, and it certainly doesn’t look like she’s wearing an earpiece, and you’d think that she would’ve lost access to any truly invisible gee-whiz tech when she parted company with the CIA. Maybe she’s just doing the “putting her finger to her ear so she can listen to her earpiece better” thing to impress Randy? Or maybe she’s just using her spy instincts and I’m misinterpreting it. “Twinge in my knee? That means a rainstorm’s brewing. Twinge in my jaw? That means they’re coming.”

Crankshaft, 5/8/21

You ever open the comics page and get the distant echo of a joke that probably seemed extremely topical and funny a year ago, when it was written? That’s gonna be the experience of reading the Funkyverse strips for the next who knows how long!

Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 5/3/21

Man, clearly the menace here is not Dennis, who’s merely playfully experimenting with the results of intensifying ontological categories, but rather Henry, who’s walking away from the table with a smug little smirk on his face. “Ha ha, Dennis you scamp,” he’s thinking, “Can’t let her get too comfortable! I’m carrying exactly one bowl into the kitchen, so I’m doing my part to clean up.”

Dick Tracy, 5/3/21

Say, how’s Sam and Dick’s witness babysitting going? Well, they lost him, but then they found him again. Ha ha, police work isn’t all fun and games! Sometimes it’s grinding attention to detail in pursuit of a suspect, and sometimes it’s endless bureaucracy and red tape. But other times it can be an invigorating round of hide and seek, which is, literally, fun and games. Enjoy it while it lasts, boys!

Judge Parker, 5/3/21

You’ve been tracking … the CIA’s movements? Like, the whole CIA? All [checks Wikipedia] 21,500 employees? Maybe the CIA shouldn’t have let April quit, she seems like she’s pretty good at spy stuff.