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Gil Thorp, 7/4/19

Readers: I hereby apologize for ever doubting the continuity-respecting bona fides of the Gil Thorp creative team. Faithful reader Downpuppy pointed me to the GoComics Without GoComics archive site created by long-ago (and perhaps still current?) faithful reader commodorejohn, which fills in some of the gaps in my sadly deficient coverage of Gil Thorp in 2005. I had completely forgotten that Jaquan was not a brand-new character when he showed up with Trey Davis a couple summers ago; in fact, back in 2005, he had been Jaquan “The Don,” a superstar player at local high school powerhouse Bishop Tardy, which blew into Milford to take on the Mudlarks, media circus in tow. Hadley stumbled on Jaquan hiding out in the library and reading books like a nerd, and later convinced him to go to college instead of jumping straight to the NBA. A decade or so later, Hadley, who became a lawyer and apparently abandoned her ideals to represent big-shot clients who could gift her front-row Bulls tickets, reconnected with Jaquan during a game, and here we are! All’s well that ends well, with rhyming!

Mark Trail, 7/4/19

Ah ha, it seems JJ didn’t drown after all. Nope, he used the flood as a distraction to separate from the group with the map so he could get to the gold mine first, probably hoping that the rest of them would wander around the desert and eventually give up and go home. Sadly, he didn’t count on Doc’s perfect memory, so now he’s gonna have to shoot them. Hey Doc, bet you’re sorry you did all those crosswords to stay sharp now!

Beetle Bailey, 7/4/19

Ah, it’s July 4th, and you know what that means for Beetle Bailey, the only comic focusing on America’s military: another episode about the tedious interpersonal drama between Sarge and Beetle. But … are we missing something? Something about this date that we should probably be covering? Probably not, but if need be we can wedge in a visual reference to it at the last minute.

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Beetle Bailey, 6/22/19

Maybe I’m getting old and my brain is turning to pudding or whatever, but I genuinely enjoyed today’s Beetle Bailey! Mostly I like the contrast between Sarge and Otto’s faces. What exactly went down at this dog show? What did Otto think would go down? The phrase “Sarge took Otto to the dog show” doesn’t make it sound like Otto was formally entered in the competition, but perhaps Otto secretly hoped that he would be spotted in the stands by one of the judges, who would say “Who’s that? Why, it’s a dog in an army uniform! What a good boy! What a very good boy, indeed!” Instead a truly zany series of events occurred that left Otto furious and Sarge confused and a little sad.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/22/19

Wow, there’s a lot going on here when it comes to perceptions of the powers, purpose, and very nature of political authority. In the first panel, Snuffy bluntly demands that Sheriff Tait use his monopoly on legitimate violence in the Holler to expel outsiders: to our hillbilly, the demos to which the sheriff answers has the absolute right to control access to local territory and resources in favor of natives if competition for those resources gets too intense. The sheriff’s initial response might at first seem to indicate his loyalty to a code of abstract law — the outsiders have a right to be there, and nothing can be done unless they’ve actually committed a crime. But then, we see the cash in his hand and we learn the truth: Tait doesn’t truck with either modern legalism or traditional community-based exercises of power. He just sees the law and the state as a vehicle for his personal enrichment. Snuffy can’t help but be impressed.

Mark Trail, 6/22/19

Good news, everyone! Mark, Leola, and Doc are close to the mine! I guess they don’t need to find JJ and pull the map out from under his waterlogged corpse after all, and can just let the desert scavengers do their thing uninterrupted.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/17/19

Oh hey, remember that Barney Google and Snuffy Smith crossover business from a couple weeks ago that I quickly lost interest in? Well, it was all a run-up to the strip’s 100th anniversary. Thanks for 100 bodacious years, the strip’s titular characters say, though given how the history of the strip has played out, really Snuffy should be saying “Thanks for 85 bodacious years,” and Barney should reply “Thanks for 35 bodacious years, and then decades of extremely rare bodacious cameos, and then more frequent bodacious appearances starting in 2012 for whatever reason.” I was going to make fun the today’s boast (threat?) that this strip will last another century or maybe even more, but it’s honestly pretty wild it’s lasted this long, so who’s to say what the future holds? Anyway, let’s see how the other strips in the King Features stable are kissing Barney Google and Snuffy Smith’s ass today!

Mark Trail, 6/17/19

Kudos to Mark Trail for dispensing with its contractual obligation with a bit of confusing dialogue rather than trying to integrate Snuffy into the wold of the strip, possibly as a grotesque, gnomish hermit living deep in the Sonoran Desert. Instead we’re just left with Mark looking at Doc thinking “Is this … a bit? Is he doing a bit? Couldn’t he just call from his cell phone? We all have cell phones, right?”

Shoe, 6/17/19

I’m also fond of today’s Shoe, in which the sapient bird-characters threaten to kill and eat (hopefully in that order) the beloved sapient (?) horse-character Spark Plug. Then they’ll eat Barney and Snuffy too! How dare these humans come to the treetop realm of the bird-men! They must be punished!

Six Chix, 6/17/19

Six Chix gives a shoutout to Barney’s … famous … self-driving car? Maybe this is a reference to Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company that spun off of Google, or maybe it’s just acknowledgement that Barney will need a new form of transportation now that the birds have eaten Spark Plug.

Family Circus, 6/17/19

Meanwhile, that other venerable institution of the funny pages, the Family Circus, absolutely cannot be bothered to say anything nice about the birthday boys. Oh, your weird urban-sharpie-turned-hillbilly-minstrel-show strip is a hundred years old? Who cares. It’s Father’s Day week, and that means Jeffy Keane is going do a strip where he pretends to be his brother insulting his sister while giving their dad a day off. Fuck Dolly and her shitty toaster-operation skills and fuck Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: that’s the official Family Circus position.