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Marvin, 9/27/20

It’s become something of a cliche for me to complain on this here blog about how the widely syndicated newspaper comic strip Marvin is just obsessed with poop, but I have to say that I can’t remember of an instance of them actually just showing a steaming turd in the strip? (Other than the noxious title character, of course! [ba-dum-dum]) That’s why I confess I’m vaguely intrigued that the punchline (“punchline”) panel here depicts snowdrift-thick piles of bird shit on Jeff’s car. Why do you suppose they can get away with that and not actual Marvin poop? My guess it’s because bird crap looks just different enough from our own excrement (since this is a Sunday strip, it’s colored by the original artist and really captures that real-life white-brown tinge) that it’s not quite as taboo, but … I dunno man, I feel like this is testing our boundaries and we need to launch a prim letter-writing campaign about community standards or things could get very, very dark in this strip. (Dark brown, I mean, because we’re going to be seeing lots of drawings of Marvin’s feces.)

Hagar the Horrible, 9/27/20

Hagar has come back from a long voyage robbing and pillaging, and his house seems to have been abandoned — maybe his family has left him, or maybe they’ve been kidnapped and enslaved by a rival raiding Viking band. Or they could just be dead! Hagar doesn’t seem to care much, though. Ha … ha?

Dustin, 9/27/20

I’m choosing to believe that Meg overheard yesterday’s stupid conversations about redundancies, got as mad about it as I did, and is now just rubbing her dad’s nose in it so he never, ever brings up the subject again.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/1/20

Here’s a fun “lockdown story” for you: for pretty much the whole time my wife and I have been married, she’s been prone to minor colds — nothing serious, but maybe a few days every other month or so — in a way that I’m not, which has resulted in a certain amount of good natured teasing about which one of us has a superior immune system. But a few weeks ago, she realized that she hasn’t had a cold since March, which is when her job had her start working at home, like I do all the time. In other words, it’s not that my immune system is any tougher than hers; it’s that I, like Harwood père, have been quarantining for the last twenty years, pretty much. Anyway, I’m glad that this strip has wrapped up the story of the flamboyant con artist so we can really focus on the guy who’s exactly as boring as me, a guy who blogs about newspaper comic strips for a living.

Crankshaft, 9/1/20

It took me years of reading this strip to realize that Keesterman, the guy whose mailbox Crankshaft annihilates on a daily basis due to some combination of incompetence and spite, is also one of Crankshaft’s only two non-work friends. Anyway, you might at first glance think that Keesterman (who it’s also just occurred to me has a name that means “Ass Man,” which is neither here nor there) is honoring his late friend Crankshaft, who passed away peacefully last night, in a uniquely appropriate way. But of course, that’s not true; Crankshaft will never die, due to the aforementioned spite, and Keesterman is just being extremely passive aggressive.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/1/20

Speaking of hateful Funkyverse characters who will never die, I feel like it’s been years since we’ve seen any sustained Les-Cayla interaction, so I’m excited to see them snipe at each other about the heady melange of danger and sexual attraction to a young actress playing Les’s dead first wife he’s been experiencing in Los Angeles, city of dreams!

Marvin, 9/1/20

I guess “reckless” is supposed to imply something … sexy, maybe? … but look, I’ve read enough columns in celebrity tabloids by “body language experts” to know that these two — sitting next to each other on the couch, facing forward, arms crossed — now only stimulate each other via taunts and cruel misdirection.

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Marvin, 8/27/20

Today’s Marvin is what happens when you’re trying to come up with a joke about toilets because that’s what you do, but you want to do one that isn’t about pooping, for once, so instead you decide to do one about how children become attached to ephemeral creatures and often their deaths and the undignified disposal of their bodies is their initial introduction to the scary notion of mortality, but then you decide to bring it back around to pooping in the end because, really, isn’t it all about the pooping, when you think about it?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/27/20

Look, I don’t pretend to be consistent, but I know what I like and I know what I don’t like, and what I don’t like is Snuffy Smith trying to get “topical.”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/27/20

Hey, guys, fun fact: did you know that you don’t get goose down from a live goose? And that the world of Mother Goose and Grimm includes both sapient geese and goose down-filled pillows? Anyway, Grimm still likes to use Mother Goose as a living pillow. You know, for now.