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Hi and Lois, 10/16/19

Because I’m both a comics obsessive and a transit obsessive, I’m reasonably sure that the only time we’ve ever seen Hi on the subway was during this non-canon crossover event. That tells me that Hi is not on his typical commute, which I assume usually takes him along the auxiliary interstate highway that connects his pedestrian-hostile suburban subdivision to the pedestrian-hostile office park where Foofram Industries has its regional HQ. But not today. Today, Hi has abandoned his car in the parking lot of the outermost stop on the regional transit system and is heading into the city to vanish forever into his new life. This phone call will just serve to postpone by a few precious hours the moment when Lois realizes he’s not coming back and starts calling the cops.

Mary Worth, 10/16/19

Wow, remember back in the ’00s, when downtown Santa Royale was a bleak slum full of thugs and fallen women where Mary was terrified to venture? Well, as in many cities, it became an outpost of Santa Royale’s boho arts community, who were attracted by cheap rents and embraced the aesthetic of the grit they helped displace, leading normies to conclude that the neighborhood was “getting better,” with in turn brought us here, to the final stage of gentrification: tech millionaires living in huge townhomes that take up almost an entire lot, which they presumably demolished the Downtown Women’s Shelter to build.

Judge Parker, 10/16/19

“Then I remembered that we’re, like, bonkers rich! Remember that time we bought an RV on whim that we didn’t need or even really want? So yeah, go ahead and build like three more commercial structures on our vast compound if you want, whatever.”

Funky Winkerbean, 10/16/19

“That’s why I had Bull murdered and made it look like a suicide! Wait, did I say that part out loud?”

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/6/19

Oh, ha ha, the thing he was wearing: his football helmet! His football helmet, which this highway patrolman yanked off his corpse to present to his widow. Do you think there’s some blood and brains and stuff inside there? Probably at least a little, right?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/6/19

I guess I’m kind of surprised that a newspaper comic did a strip about how undeveloped rural communities often turn to unsustainable extractive industries for short-term economic survival because they don’t have the luxury to consider the long-term consequences. But now that one’s here, I’m not at all surprised it’s a Snuffy Smith.

Judge Parker, 10/6/19

Were you worried that Marie’s new gig with the Spencer-Drivers wouldn’t entail a bunch of emotional labor? Well, good news!

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Judge Parker, 10/5/19

Hey, remember back in April, when Marie quit her job as the Spencer-Driver compound’s primary servant so she could go to grad school? Well, turns out grad school’s expensive, so it looks like she will once again be taking on a job as a Spencer-Driver compound servant, only this time to “work part-time at” the ill-advised B&B Abbey launched in a fit of aimless mania, and by “work part-time at” we mean “do 100% of the management of as Abbey immediately stops paying attention to it once Marie shows up to bail her out.” Fortunately, Abbey is so far removed from the little people and their financial concerns that Marie will be able to write a truly staggering number of zeroes on that post-it note, safe in the knowledge that the Spencer-Driver money guy will just sigh heavily and sell a certain percentage of the family’s krugerrand reserves after Abbey hands it to him without ever having looked at it.

The Lockhorns, 10/5/19

The Lockhorns is not a strip known for its verisimilitude, but it is absolutely true that every single comedy club has a name that sounds like someone was held at gunpoint and forced to come up with twenty “funny” nonsense names for comedy clubs, and then they used the twentieth one the poor victim came up with, the one that came only after five minutes of them crying and begging to be allowed to see their family again someday. So, yeah, I absolutely believe that the place Loretta would try to drag Leroy into in an attempt to be able to spend time with him without talking and maybe have him get made fun of by touring comic who’s not at all happy to be there would be called “Cachinnation’s,” and I find the font believable as well.

Pluggers, 10/5/19

Pluggers have long centered their identity around living in exurban communities that are so completely built around the automobile that pedestrians are considered cultural aberrations, but it’s honestly surprising to me that they’re being so up front about it.

Mary Worth, 10/5/19

So … it looks like Mary Worth has chosen, over the next several weeks, to show us, in a very deliberately paced series of strips, Wilbur and Estelle having sex? I guess … I guess we deserve this, for something we did, somewhere along the line.