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Baby Blues, 12/21/21

Video is an illusion, a series of still images run in sequence so quickly that your brain can’t perceive them as individual pictures and instead smooths them together to create what appears to be movement. In animation, a smear is a trick that can heighten this sense of motion by using an individual frame that itself contains a blur or multiple still images of the moving figure. You can see some great examples here or follow this Twitter feed for more. The technique is also used in comics, sometimes to great effect! But sometimes it implies that a comic strip mom’s face is a nightmarish mass of writhing tentacles just barely contained by a protective mask, and by “protective” in this case, I don’t mean that the mask reduces transmission of the novel coronavirus, but rather that it holds back these awful and presumably slimy face-limbs from bursting out and squeezing the life out of us while we scream in terror.

Mary Worth, 12/21/21

I’m beginning to suspect that the larger point of this Mary Worth storyline is to tap into a near-universal situation: almost all of us have a loved one who is in a relationship with an obviously and objectively terrible person, and it interferes with our own friendship with them. Rather than trying to break them up, Mary implies, we should just accept that people come together for mysterious reasons of their own that we can’t understand. Which is a real cop out, considering that the reason Estelle and Wilbur got back together is because Mary told Estelle to take him back! It’s Mary Worth who’s responsible for your friend’s bad relationship decisions! Here, take this pitchfork and map to Charterstone.

Marvin, 12/21/21

There’s so much about Marvin the comic strip and Marvin the character I find objectionable, but at the top of the list, maybe even above the shitting, is when he gives the audience a smug, knowing look to accentuate some terrible punchline. “Eh?” he seems to asking us today? “Eh? Women be shopping? Sexism? Eh?”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/28/21

If you want the answer to “Why is Rex Morgan boring now” in a nutshell, here it is: one of the strip’s more devious characters has to be begged to start some drama and she simply doesn’t care. Her brother is literally shoving documents in her face that say “That big secret you just heard about on the news, that everyone wants to know the answer to? Well here’s the answer!!!” And she’s just like “Enh, probably it isn’t and if it is why bother.” Remember, this strip’s readers had to deal with someone they barely know getting blown up off-panel just a few weeks ago, so they aren’t emotionally prepared for any excitement right now.

Marvin, 11/28/21

The rhythm of today’s Marvin is truly shambolic, the narrative lurching about in fits and starts and ending with a punchline delivered by an irritatingly out-of-the blue talking gorilla. Still, I kind of appreciate that the strip pauses for a panel where Marvin locks eyes with us and says, smiling, “Grandpa’s at the doctor all the time. He’s very sick and in constant pain. He’ll be dead soon!”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/27/21

Here’s the thing, folks: I spent a lot of brain power this week remembering the various Funkyverse familial relationships and it’s supposed to be a holiday, so I refuse to do the digging through my archives/mind palace necessary to determine whether Edward’s older sister is in fact Nancy — the One Designated Bad Rex Morgan Teen who does Bad Teen things like throwing superspreader parties and vandalizing mobsters’ cars — or is maybe just some other girl with similar hair. Anyway, it turns out that that despite Rex and June’s sigh of relief about Sarah’s non-fame, it turns out that becoming a new coauthor on a wildly successful series of children’s books does in fact spark curiosity, and if you have a big mouth about it Nancy (?) is going to blow your cover sooner or later.

Marvin, 11/27/21

Marvin has been doing a whole week about the title character hanging out with “Sirexa” (get it, it’s like Siri + Alexa!!!) and since we’re still in the Thanksgiving weekend here I’m going to go ahead and give thanks that, when the time came to do the hilarious joke about this digital assistant device eating, we did not discover the round opening at the top of its body to be an awful, jawless mouth, like a lamprey’s or something similarly unpleasant. We can’t see whatever no doubt nightmarish maw it’s now shoveling popcorn into, but at least we were spared that.