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Mary Worth, 7/28/19

Hey, Hugo, “joie de vivre” is a phrase, not a “saying,” first of all, and you know what? We do have that phrase in the English language, and it’s “joie de vivre”! Because English just incorporates whatever words and phrases it wants from other languages, and then English speakers use them in day-to-day conversation, so they become part of English! Coup d’etat? Deja vu? Those are English now! Our language grows and changes because we don’t have a government-appointed commission trying to keep it pure, like French does! And that’s why we’re number one! [gets a chant started to the rhythm of “USA USA”] ANGLOPHONES! ANGLOPHONES! ANGLOPHONES!

Beetle Bailey, 7/28/19

What’s your pick for the most unsettling part about this fantasy Beetle has about being unable to escape the drudgery of Army life even after death? To me, it’s the fact that, even though he and Miss Buxley are married indicating this is in some indefinite future, he seems to have died at more or less the same age he is now, not when he was old or anything. What did he die of? What did he die of???

Panel from The Lockhorns, 7/28/19

“It’s ridiculous! There’s no context where ‘hard time’ designates a length of time! It’s a reference to how you spend your time, or where (like in prison). This isn’t clever wordplay at all! It’s just a confusing non sequitur and you need to cut it out.”

Dennis the Menace, 7/28/19

So, uh, Dennis got into a fistfight with a kid up the street! Like, I’m not even sure if I have joke to make here but I feel like it’s worth bringing to your attention. He punched that kid right in the face!

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Mark Trail, 7/27/19

Oh, hey, here’s what the real story with the gold mine turned out to be: some bad guys robbed a dude at the Tucson Gem Show and took his gold nuggets, but then two of the three bad guys died in a shootout with the cops, and so the last bad guy hid the nuggets way out in the desert somewhere, and then, five years later, picked up some impressionable young wrangers/vet students and lured them out to the desert with nonsense talk about a magic wandering gold mine so he could “find” the stolen nuggets in the “magic mine,” which has to be the most convoluted method of laundering stolen money I can possibly think of. Then he left behind a framed newspaper article with the context necessary to figure all this out in a treasure chest! It almost hurts my head, how much sense this all makes.

The Lockhorns, 7/27/19

I’m really enjoying Leroy’s glum facial expression as he stands far away from his wife, talking to nobody at this party. In a way, doesn’t he represent all of us? Isolated and alone at a social gathering, floating in some weird void, while our supposed loved ones talk shit to someone else?

Funky Winkerbean, 7/27/19

“It’s as if they’ve lost any agency of their own and exist only to be rewards for us! Rewards we definitely haven’t earned!”

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Beetle Bailey, 6/16/19

Gotta say, I don’t agree with Sarge here. Beetle is entirely passive in this tale, swept along by events without taking action or seizing control of his own destiny. And then there’s the bear that enters the story in the third act: what’s his deal? Is there an emotional connection between him? What motivates him? Without seeing inside his head he’s just a deus ex machina. Beetle needs to read Robert McKee’s Story or at least Save The Cat and then do some extensive rewrites if he has any hopes of getting this script optioned.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 6/16/19

This is the sort of Crankshaft-esque exaggeration that has no place in the Lockhorns, which is usually brutally realistic both in its setting and in its bleak emotional landscape. That’s why I’m choosing to believe that things really are as they seem: the bombs are dropping, nuclear fire is destroying everything, civilization as we know it is about to be annihilated. Loretta knows that she has only seconds before the shockwave hits and burns the skin off her bones, just seconds left to get in one more passive-aggressive dig in at Leroy. He’ll never know what she said — he’s probably dead already — but she feels like if she doesn’t, in some strange way she will have failed him.

Six Chix, 6/16/19

Fun fact: 96 percent of tadpoles die before they reach adulthood! Happy Father’s Day, frog-dad, sorry about the awful emotional carnage in store for you