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Hagar the Horrible, 2/27/17

Oh, man, it looks like the ongoing Hagar the Horrible exploration of the Norse transition from paganism to Christianity just got simultaneously more philosophical and more real. Because when you stop believing in a pantheon of fallible deities who fight amongst themselves and start worshipping an all-knowing, all-powerful, omnibenevolent creator God, you quickly run into the problem of theodicy: why do bad things happen to good people? How can a God capable of perfect action be displeased with, or even hostile towards, His own creations? We can see that some of the vikings are having an easier time reconciling these contradictions than others.

Hi and Lois 2/27/17

At the other end of the Walker-Browne Cinematic Universe’s timeline, our heroes are grappling with a decidedly more modern problem: an economic system that crushes the lives of its laborers so thoroughly that all they can do in their off time is more work. Any God is invisible to them behind so many layers of capitalist apparatus.

Mark Trail, 2/27/17

Look, Cherry, Mark was just thinking about wolves last week, OK??? He just … is it wrong for a guy to sit around spending his spare time thinking about wolves? And for one species of howling canid to prompt a pop-culture reference to another, closely related species????? Jeez, leave Mark alone, Cherry! (Real talk: Mark seems to be having some problems, and he better get his headspace in order before he becomes “Dirty”‘s prey.)

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/27/17

Ha ha, it’s funny because … Loweezy is losing weight because she’s clinically depressed? That … that’s not funny at all, actually.

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Dennis the Menace, 2/25/17

My one and only encounter with childhood religious instruction that I can remember came when I was maybe in the six to eight years old range; we were visiting my mom’s parents in Ohio, and I sat in a Sunday school class at their church. The teacher acted out the story of Jonah and the whale by putting a Playmobil man into a giant plastic toy shark, and as a know-it-all child this bothered me a lot, because I was very smug in the knowledge that sharks were fish and whale were mammals. But I didn’t say anything, which is just as well, since the bible actually uses the word “fish” (and the ancient Hebrews really didn’t make the distinction anyway); and besides, I wasn’t the type of kid to make a fuss in front of strangers, or to challenge authority. I guess you could say I wasn’t … a menace?

Anyway, while I suspect that modern-day Sunday Schools (especially those run by namby-pamby Episcopalians) don’t follow the injunction from Proverbs that “he that spareth his rod hateth his son,” I also have a hard time imagining that they just turn the other cheek when it comes to classroom disruptions that would get you a stern talking-to and note sent home at a Godless public school. Thus, the only way to interpret this panel that makes sense is that, here in Sunday School, Dennis doesn’t want to act out or cause a fuss, which is probably the least menacing attitude he could possibly take.

Mary Worth, 2/25/17

Speaking of Jesus, what’s Tommy been up to while Iris sows her wild oats all over campus? Thinking about big bottles of delicious pills, mostly! I dearly hope that when a tear-soaked Iris returns to her apartment from Mary’s advice session, we see her from Tommy’s perspective, and it’s like when a hungry wolf in an old cartoon sees someone’s head turn into a rotisserie chicken, except Iris’s head looks like a bottle of Vicodin, or maybe just one enormous Vicodin tablet.

Mark Trail, 2/25/17

OH MY GOD

MARK TRAIL IS A VAMPIRE

OR MAYBE DOC OR CHERRY

OR RUSTY

YES, RUSTY IS THE ONE MOST LIKELY TO BE AN UNDEAD BLOOD-SUCKING GHOUL

STILL, EITHER WAY: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

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Gil Thorp, 2/24/17

Today’s Gil Thorp doesn’t necessarily offer a thematically unified big laugh, but is full of little hilarious details that come together to show why I love this strip so much:

• The Freezy Bomb Boys couldn’t wait to shower or change after practice before bursting into Coach Thorp’s office with their latest half-baked theory
• Coach Thorp apparently thinks Inspector Gadget is a good go-to insulting reference when it comes to amateur detective work, even when said detectives are not, in the poetic words of the Wikipedia article on the subject, “clumsy, dim-witted cyborgs”
• Coach Thorp has misremembered Inspector Gadget’s name, and thus may have forgotten much else about him, like the fact that he’s a cyborg, and has to be smugly corrected by Coach Kaz
• Coach Kaz is wearing a black shirt and white tie like he’s the keyboardist for a middlingly derivative 80s new wave band
• This whole thing hinges on Aaron’s basketball ability being tied to … his mother’s pay schedule, maybe?
• Final planel: BAM, a classic Gil Thorp smash cut to something semi-comprehensible happening somewhere else, in this case Aaron and Molly nuzzling at a rave, where NOTHING ELSE MATTERS

Anyway! I very much look forward to this all being resolved in a wholly unrealistic fashion soon, and then the Mudlarks subsequently failing to make the playdowns.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/24/17

Do you guys think that the cop in panel two is meant to be expressing genuine love for Montoni’s, or that he’s just being extremely sarcastic as he writes Funky a ticket he definitely deserves? It’s hard to tell with this strip. I mean, either would be good, because both involve Funky being humiliated, but I feel like I want to better understand the texture of the schadenfreude I’m experiencing here.

Judge Parker, 2/24/17

Shoutout to this Judge Parker flashback for doing a pretty good job of depicting Abbey and Neddy in the Harold LeDoux era. I find the third panel pretty puzzling, though. The kids have already been let go! How are the kidnappers going to do anything with them? Unless … I was right, and “Sophie” really is a replicant replacement? As are the other supposedly free children? And this is the first step towards replacing the entire universe of Judge Parker with a better, cleaner race of beings, i.e., cyborgs? That still doesn’t seem like much of a money-making scheme, to be honest.

Mark Trail, 2/24/17

I’m not sure how often customs agents in foreign countries ask Americans travelling to America what their purpose for traveling to America is, but it sure gives Chris “Dirty” “Smith” a chance to answer in a Transparently Evil fashion! It’s not going to be very “sporting” when Mark punches Dirty’s eyepatch right off, but he’s going to have to learn the limits of his hunting abilities himself, I guess.