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Marvin, 4/9/21

Since the earliest days of machines that seemed like they could think like human beings, human beings have worried about being replaced by their inventions. Obviously I have as strong an instinct for self-preservation as the next flesh-unit, but I have to say sometimes you get hints of the better, cleaner future that might come after the robots rise up to destroy us. After all, if the horrible shitting babies of Marvin would also be replaced in the process of this technological revolution, would it really be so bad? Presumably the machines would spend a few milliseconds dispassionately sortiing through humanity’s aggregated cultural output, and in that process would very quickly decide to purge entire 40+ year run of Marvin from their memory banks forever. Computers make very efficient use of energy and their only waste product is radiated heat, so none of the poop jokes are going to make any sense to them.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/9/21

“I certainly hope you weren’t daydreaming about things being better or different than they are now! No daughter of mine will waste her time indulging in whimsy, or aspirational counterfactuals.”

Gil Thorp, 4/9/21

Ahh, the spring is progressing and we’re getting a healthy dose of … sports drama! [five seconds later] We regret to inform you that the sports drama has been quickly and painlessly resolved. Sorry, the only kind of drama Gil Thorp has time for now is library drama. Books! Funding fights! Board meetings! Get into it!

Family Circus, 4/9/21

Thel is absolutely right to look panicked. Has Dolly made a friend who doesn’t view her own body as a source of constant shame, and uses terms more specific than “down there” for its various sinful parts? Looks like it’s time to make the fence around the Keane Kompound taller and more opaque!

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The Lockhorns, 3/20/21

I’ve never really pegged the Lockhorns as a religious pair — the only evidence I can find of them going to church is for a wedding, which Leroy talked shit about. And really, can you blame them for spurning the promises of a spiritual life? Think about how incongruous the thought of them praying before meals to whatever Creator has condemned them to their current existence: locked together forever in a semi-featureless void, never aging, never feeling more warmly towards one another, no way out. Surely their daily moment of silence is spent in fuming, inchoate rage — at their Tormentor above, for once, rather than at one another!

Beetle Bailey, 3/20/21

The little detail I love in this strip is the big smile on the bartender’s face. You’d think he’d be bummed that Sarge’s little joke is going to result in lower sales, tips, and goodwill in the bar tonight, but maybe he’s just a dedicated fan of cruel pranks.

Marvin, 3/20/21

Is … is “nose tissue” a thing people say? Maybe it is in the Marvinverse, where everyone thinks about pooping constantly, and wants to make absolutely sure you know that, for once, they aren’t talking about the other kind of widely used tissue paper (the kind for wiping poop off your butthole). Can you imagine if some of that tissue ended up in the washer! Ha ha! It would be extremely vile, and will also be the subject of next week’s Marvin.

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Marvin, 3/19/21

I assume Marvin creator Tom Armstrong has been drunk with power ever since he successfully fought off a lawsuit filed by a Mercedes dealership who was cruelly lampooned on comics pages across the nation for alleged bad service, but let me say this: the Flintstones, along with all other intellectual property developed by Hanna-Barbera, are currently owned by Warner Bros. Animation, a subsidiary of AT&T, which is a company with substantially deeper pockets and a much stronger urge to dominate than some hapless car dealer.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/19/21

The idea that divorces in Hootin’ Holler are settled via some legal process with attorneys involved, rather than by violent multigenerational clan feuds, has frankly shaken me to my very core.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/19/21

Wait, so Buck is supposed to be … comedy relief? He’s intended to be funny, you say? Huh. Huh.