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Blondie, 5/12/22

You ever stare at a sentence for a long stretch of time and become increasingly convinced that it doesn’t really make sense as something a native speaker of 21st century American English would say? Probably not, as you don’t have a semi-successful comics blog you’ve got to churn out content for every day, but the point is that “How much are you wanting?” fell into that category, for me, until I finally convinced myself that it would sound right if it were in a comical fake Irish accent from an old-timey movie. “How much are ye wanting then, lads?” See, doesn’t that sound better? Or at least funnier? Wouldn’t it be funnier if Dagwood spoke in a comical Irish accent? Have I finally cracked the code necessary to read Blondie every day and find it funny, after all these years?

Hi and Lois, 5/12/22

“Is that why your face is constantly immobile, your mouth perpetually in an O of surprise? The price of beauty is wearing a dead mask, every day of your life?”

The Lockhorns, 5/12/22

The long, unkempt beards of Greek philosophers were meant to signify that they were so invested in the life of the mind that they couldn’t be bothered to concern themselves with ordinary, quotidian matters like hygiene, and in the early 20th century, many men at Ivy League colleges indulged in a similar aesthetic impulse for similar reasons, making a vogue out of a disheveled, slovenly style of dress. In the 1940s, students at the elite women’s colleges cast off their girdles and began to imitate their male counterparts, and a key part of their new uniform was a baggy cardigan referred to as a “sloppy joe sweater.” This is a long-winded way of me saying that fine, I admit it, I was wrong, the Lockhorns are definitely not Millennials.

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/9/22

Happy Monday, everybody, Funky Winkerbean is starting up the week with a funeral, obviously. I’m pretty sure Mary Sue isn’t someone we’ve actually met before in this strip, and Funky and Les want to make it clear that they don’t actually know her well or care that much about her, they just think it’s an important Funkyverse ritual to stop by funerals and acknowledge that everyone’s dying all the time, just some of us a little sooner than others. “Mary Sue” is of course also a derogatory term for an idealized authorial self-insert character in fanfiction, and it absolutely tracks that an idealized self-insert character in Funkyverse fan fiction would be someone who dies off-panel in order to give the sad sack main characters the chance to talk about how the whole world is falling apart, really.

Crankshaft, 5/9/22

Meanwhile, the “fun” Funkyverse strip is here to make sure you never forget the real victim of 9/11 (Crankshaft’s grill).

The Lockhorns, 5/9/22

I’m sorry, I’m usually on team “The Lockhorns is good, actually,” but I do demand that the strip keep to its mission of laser-focusing on Leroy and Loretta’s mutual animosity and self-inflected misery. Leroy complaining that it’s annoying when he has to leave the house to buy things simply won’t cut it.

Mary Worth, 5/9/22

Well, it seems this plotline is going to wrap up without much conflict, I guess the last detail to take care of is Cal, I wonder how oh my GOD Ian is going to come to Toby’s class and GLOWER at him, and possibly start pounding his chest and making what he thinks are gorilla noises, this is gonna be AMAZING

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Pluggers, 5/5/22

I think I’m discovering the shape that my Gen X pluggerdom is going to take: in constant complaints that Pluggers, the syndicated newspaper comic strip, is depicting the plugger lifestyle incorrectly! Anyway, for a plugger “logging on” is sitting on a log with a grandchild or a good buddy while fishing, are you trying to tell me that pluggers are lacking in human contact but have two-factor authentication turned on for most of their online accounts, are you for real

Mary Worth, 5/5/22

Every ongoing work of art creates narrative suspense in its own unique way. Mary Worth, for instance, is keeping us guessing this week. Yes, in any normal storytelling situation, if there had been some big drama built up and suddenly we smash-cut to one of the participants telling a third party “Oh, yes, the conflict was resolved, my husband took care of it off-panel,” we’d obviously expect that the problem has not, in fact, been solved at all! Because that doesn’t really make sense, and it doesn’t make for a very satisfying story. There’s gotta be something more to it! But this is Mary Worth, so there is in fact only a fifty-fifty chance that there’s something more to it.

Lockhorns, 5/5/22

An ordinary person would just do the Jaws music at this point, but no ordinary person would remain in the twisted, hate-filled Lockhorn marriage as long as Leroy Lockhorn. Somehow the thought of Leroy delivering this line in a soul-numbed monotone is both infinitely funnier and infinitely sadder than just having him go “Daaaaahhhh DUNH” or whatever.

Shoe, 5/5/22

While the bird-Jews of Shoe still follow the teachings of the Torah and the Talmud, it appears the bird-Christians have turned their back on the Nicene Creed and now worship the Father, the Son, and the late Jeff MacNelly.