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Family Circus, 6/20/20

One of the Secrets of the Family Circus is that there was an original, different Big Daddy Keane, with an entirely different attitude and body plan, in the early days of the strip. While mostly he’s forgotten now, you can still see hints of him in certain panels, like today’s, which implies heavily that the Keane patriarch doesn’t really like his kids and doesn’t want to spend any time with them.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/20/20

Look, there’s plenty to say about how roles for women are cast in Hollywood, with fairly transparent sexualization and an obsession with youth, but if you’re looking to make that point in the most off-putting and unpleasant way possible, then sure, just have Les seething through the whole process about these dumb sluts who dare to play my precious Lisa. Despite hanging around his hip Hollywood pals, Les seems unfamiliar with the concept of hair and makeup professionals who’ll be able to make whatever actress is chosen look just like Lisa, changing her hair color from … oh, look, how convenient, the syndicate colorists have done it for them.

Judge Parker, 6/20/20

OH MY GOD THE SPENCER-DRIVERS ARE EXPERIENCING FINANCIAL CONSEQUENCES FROM THEIR ACTIONS????? THIS IS INSANE AND UNPRECEDENTED

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Curtis, 6/9/20

Obviously strips like Curtis where the focus is more on the kids’ lives tend to give short shrift to the parents, but it’s 100% true that we never see Greg interacting with any adults other than his wife in a non-work context. At least Diane has her church group friends to occasionally have meetings with so Curtis can disrupt them! It’s absolutely heartbreaking for Greg to say, without hesitation, that what he misses most is his friends, as he closes his eyes and smiles wistfully, contemplating another, better world where he was emotionally fulfilled.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/9/20

It’s funny because we’ve seen Mason Jarr play exactly two roles in his time in the Funkyverse: Starbuck Jones, in the big-budget Starbuck Jones production, who is some kind of superhero spaceman and thus could not be the subject of this kind of “get in his head” exercise, and Les Moore, in the first abortive attempt to film Lisa’s Story, at which point Mason wasn’t even aware that the guy he was playing was same guy as the screenwriter! But I don’t want to dwell too much on that, because I’m too busy dwelling on the image of a second, smaller Les Moore, possibly implanted in Mason’s digestive tract by some sort of facehugger creature who rammed its ovipositor down his throat while he was unconscious, bursting out of Mason’s ribcage during dinner, leaving Les and Cayla’s dining room a mess of blood and viscera. Would the pleasure we’d all derive from this gruesome scenario be mitigated by the fact that, at the end of the process, we’d have two Les Moores?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/9/20

Rex is telling Sarah the story of how he and June met, which mostly seems to be the story of how back when he first started his medical career he had to deal with a lot of patients and their illnesses and their human problems, gross. Now he runs his own clinic and he doesn’t have to do shit! It’s great!

Judge Parker, 6/9/20

“The honest truth is that I probably would’ve lost the mayoral race, and badly, but this mug? They can never take this mug away from me. Not without a warrant.”

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Shoe, 6/2/20

A thing I find genuinely interesting is how in some strips, slowly, over many years, the title character is edged out of the protagonist slot and replaced by their previous #2. Thus, Blondie is now about Dagwood more often than not, Funky Winkerbean spends loathsome amounts of energy on the antics of Les Moore, and Shoe mostly follows the life of the Perfesser. In this case, he’s the marginally more sympathetic character, and this strip demonstrates that pretty well: you can tell that having to write this pun, which some high-priced consultant hired by the private equity firm that just bought the Tattler-Tribune says will “boost engagement,” makes him hate himself very, very much.

Mary Worth, 6/2/20

Oh, man, it’s not just Toby in this new plot, but Saul Wynter, too! Remember Saul Wynter? The old grump who got a dog to replace his wife, but the dog died, so Mary forced him to adopt a new dog? Well, it turns out one of his dear childhood friends has passed away, and even though it sounds like they hadn’t been in touch for a while, it’s nice to know that Saul’s entire life is still dominated by constant emotional loss.

Judge Parker, 6/2/20

yesssssss

judge parker senior has the ‘rona

JUDGE

PARKER

SENIOR

HAS

THE ‘RONA