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Daddy Daze, 1/30/20

So this week I’ve decided to add some new strips to my rotation, and one of them is Daddy Daze, billed by King Features as being about “Paul, the single dad who amicably shares custody of little Angus with ex-wife Amy, as he juggles an at-home job and domestic duties.” Admittedly I’ve only been reading it for a week or so, but it seems to be more about “Paul, a single dad imprisoned in some featureless void with only a preverbal infant for company, eventually driven to madness by his loneliness and inventing increasingly deranged and nightmarish imagery out of his son’s babbling.” It’s real grim stuff.

Judge Parker, 1/30/20

So one of the ongoing Judge Parker plots is that Sophie, still suffering PTSD after her kidnapping, is, much to Abbey’s consternation, hesitant to apply to college because really, why bother, why should we act like any of us have a future, anyway? But it seems she’s now discovered a way to add meaning in her life at least in the short term, by helping her family friend and actual criminal Judge Parker Emeritus get elected mayor. Sophie’s political views are somewhat eclectic, ranging from “climate change is bad” to “any self-respecting polity ought to have a fleet of secret flying death robots to wreak havoc on its enemies,” so she should do great with Future Mayor Parker’s campaign, which mostly seems based on the idea that “Uh hey guys I went to jail for a while and it turns out jail sucks.”

The Lockhorns, 1/30/20

Have I ever liked Leroy Lockhorn? No, of course not. He is, inherently, not a likable character. But do I want to see him hurled to his death off the roof of whatever depressing suburban office building he works in? No. That’s too much. It’s too much!

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 1/26/20

When I was a kid, presumably after I had burned through the entire Encyclopedia Brown corpus, I got way into T*A*C*K, a series of children’s’ books that made so little impact on our collective cultural memory that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia article, just one on TV Tropes. The books featured four kids who solved … not mysteries, exactly; more like petty real-life annoyances, through puzzle-logic that would be familiar to anyone reading Slylock Fox. Though I’m sure I read all four books, I only actually remember two of the stories in any detail: one where the little brother of one of the protagonists was at a sleepover at someone’s house and there was a cat there and he was allergic but had forgotten his medicine at home and didn’t have a key (the kid loved cats and it made him so sad and as I cat-loving kid I felt very bad for him; I do not remember how the mystery was solved) and one where two characters are arguing over how to fairly cut up a birthday cake, with the proposed solution — one person cuts the cake and the other chooses a piece — being functionally identical to the one proposed here. Anyway, the actual answer to the question posed is that these artifacts belong in a museum, and if our two treasure hunters deliver them to the nearest undersea archaeologists together, they’ll be able to equally share the pride in doing the right thing, which is an infinite resource for those who deserve it.

The Lockhorns, 1/26/20

A lot of Leroy and Loretta’s gripes about each other are exaggerated and performative, but I always assumed there’s a grain of truth to it when Loretta belittles Leroy for not making enough money. That was before I found out they took a vacation to Niagara Falls, Rome, Venice, Scotland, and Greece, though.

Family Circus, 1/26/20

Wait, who’s the dead dude in yellow crawling around on a cloud listening to the prayers of other people’s grandkids? Since his soul is in Paradise, forever in the radiance of our Creator Himself, doesn’t he have literally an infinite number of better things to do?

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Pajama Diaries, 1/4/20

Aw, man! Pajama Diaries, which became my go-to strip for vaguely enjoyable obsessive-neurotic stylings when Edge City went out of business, is also folding up shop. RIP Pajama Diaries, you were pretty good! If anyone else has a line on a strip featuring secular Jewish characters whose playful performance of anxiety masks some really profound terror about everyday life, please let me know, as I find that sort of thing intensely relatable.

Dustin, 1/4/20

Meanwhile, the insufferably smug gentiles of Dustin will just continue to move through their lives without spending a moment worrying about anything or examining their own terrible behavior and attitudes. These two feel justified getting in this little dig despite the fact that we’ve never seen them praying, going to church, or doing anything even vaguely religious in the strip. God is dead, which is just as well because now He doesn’t have to learn about Instagram, you know?

Dick Tracy, 1/4/20

Apparently someone has tasked the Dick Tracy creative team with adding more “psychological depth” to the strip’s villains so we can understand their “motivations” or whatever, so, here you go: Mr. Roboto robs banks not just because he loves the money, but because bank robberies provide a thrilling change of pace from his otherwise dull life. It’s not clear what he feels like dressing up as a Styx robot adds to the whole process, or why cyber-cosplay isn’t enough to alleviate the ennui and why he has to bring crimes into the mix, but I think we know enough for us to feel a twinge of empathy when Dick inevitably shoots him in the face.

The Lockhorns, 1/4/20

I find it particularly challenging sometimes to construct a narrative setup to make sense of the Lockhorns panels where non-Lockhorns characters interact (always silently) with Leroy and Loretta. Like, today: who is this lady? Why is she at the Lockhorns’ house at what I assume from context is no later than 10 am to watch Leroy day drink? Is this some poor unsuspecting acquaintance Loretta has dragged over on a flimsy pretext just so she could have a witness to her husband’s alcohol problems? Whatever the case, her fixed facial expression as she stares off into the middle distance indicates that this will be her last visit, and indeed her last interaction with either of these two of any kind.

Gil Thorp, 1/4/20

You know, we make fun of Gil a lot for not doing much by way of actual coaching in this strip, but honestly it turns out that watching someone coach in a comic is boring as shit, and maybe we shouldn’t complain so much.