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Mark Trail, 8/6/19

“Also, what if your gun had one off on purpose? You know, if, while you were pointing your gun at us with your finger on the trigger and threatening to murder us if we didn’t follow your commands, you had deliberately shot us with the gun, like you said you would. That also would’ve been a terrible tragedy! Anyway, I guess we’re all going to walk through the desert together over the next few days and then get into your car, so I want you to reflect on all the ways doing things that would have been beneficial to you would have also been bad for us.”

Family Circus, 8/6/19

I’m not usually one to praise the Family Circus art, but seeing Big Daddy Keane’s whole body spasming in shock and surprise as a bucketful of ice-cold water cascades over his back, his glasses flying off his face, warmed my black, withered heart this morning. I’m a particular fan of PJ’s expression, which basically seems to be saying “Phase one of the experiment has yielded interesting results; let’s move on to phase two, shall we?”

Pluggers, 8/6/19

“Pluggers and their friends are all dying” is a perennial and beloved running gag in this strip, but you have to respect today’s take on it: if a plugger lives long enough, not only will all his friends die, but he’ll get to see all the cultural touchstones that tethered him to a wider society die off as well, only to be replaced by strange and alienating newcomers!

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/3/19

Actually, Mopey Pete, I gotta disagree with you. My guess is that “The Beanstalk” is a play of of the “beans” that people grind to make coffee, which appears to be the main thing they sell there. And if you just read the phrase “spend a lot of Jack” and thought, “Hmm, I as a native English speaker have never heard ‘jack’ used as a slang term for money — is this a usage I should be familiar with?”: results seem mixed! It appears to maybe be an archaic Britishism, and Urban Dictionary insists that “making jack” means making a profit, though I would definitely interpret it as meaning “making jack shit,” i.e., making nothing. Meanwhile, the phrase “a whole lot of jack” mainly points to a Facebook page featuring cute signs about drunkenness. My point is that I think this is yet another Funky usage that has no relationship to actual English, along the lines of “solo car date” and “vendos” and “Lewis and Clarking” and “Nordic, with the added twist of this fake phony-baloney wordplay being the sum total of the “punchline.”

Mark Trail, 8/3/19

Leola may be uncomfortable when people grapple with their feelings in an enclosed space, but Doc isn’t afraid to “dig deep” and help JJ really understand the emotional rollercoaster he’s been on. “I don’t hold it against you that you threatened us at gunpoint!” Doc says. “It could’ve happened to anyone! If things had been just a little different, I definitely would’ve killed each and every one of you, with my bare hands, just so I could possess the precious, precious gold I thought we would find here.”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., and Mark Trail, 8/2/19

Have the soaps gone soft on us? Here we are with a couple of certified villains, and now we’re being asked to, like, sympathize with their motivations, which aren’t abstract evil but rather arise from the socio-economic superstructure in which they — like us — find themselves embedded. Oh, boo hoo, credentialing institutions dangle the prospect of fulfilling and renumerative careers that they can’t deliver, leaving thousands of idealistic young people burdened with debt! Waaaah, small businesses in this country are finding it harder and harder to compete in the marketplace and end up in a downward spiral of indebtedness that they can’t ever escape from! At least Mark, Doc, and Leola are watching JJ’s meltdown with rightful suspicion. Don’t come literally crying to us because you blew all your money on vehicles with an unusual number of wheels, JJ!

Mary Worth, 8/2/19

Somehow, the sight of JJ blubbering about his small business loan isn’t the funniest thing in the soap opera comics today. No, that honor goes to Dawn and Hugo’s date at the Bum Boat, where the strained, manic quality of their “flirting” reads as if each of them is wearing a wire and has been told to keep the other talking long enough that they eventually say something incriminating. Anyway, do you think Hugo knows about Billy Big Mouth Bass? Pretty sure this is Dawn’s big opportunity to finally impress this irritating euro-splainer with something America has that France doesn’t. We can’t deliver universal health care, but if you want easy access to an animatronic mounted fish that sings, the United States is the country for you!