The Comics Curmudgeon

Main Menu

Social Media

Archive: Marvin

Comments are closed

[Me blogging, or surfing the web, or working, or doing anything, really] TAP TAP TAP

Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/26/21

“Say,” you’re almost certainly wondering, “What’s going on with Rex Morgan’s True Tales Of The Newly Diabetic Lifestyle?” What’s going on is that Mindy made a diabetic-friendly breakfast of delicious frittatas and Buck has declared that he will never, ever deviate from the program again. So everything’s fine! Everyone’s happy and well adjusted! So happy and well adjusted that Mindy completely bites the head off of her stepson for making an extremely mild joke about diabetes. Welp, I guess there’s no underlying emotional issues at play here and we can move on to whatever storyline is next in this strip! Enjoy your healthy frittatas, everyone.

Marvin, 2/26/21

I have zero interest in engaging in the actual content of this strip, but I do want to say that Jeff staring heavy-lidded at his laptop, numb to the world around him, as if hypnotized by the steady tap-tap-tap of his own fingers on the keys, is something that I find distressingly relatable.

Dennis the Menace, 2/26/21

Look how pleased Alice looks! Dennis has finally mastered the concept of metaphors, which means she and Henry can finally talk shit about their friends in front of him without him unknowingly repeating their shit-talk and making social encounters awkward! Unless … he’s known how metaphors work all this time, and is actually just an asshole? More on this story as it develops.

Comments are closed

Love to high-five my new friend when he learns I have other friends

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 2/5/21

“Oh hey! What’s going on in Gil Thorp?” is the question that’s on the mind of a number of people that’s probably literally in the single digits, but all of those people read this blog, so I will do my best to keep them in the loop! Well, it turns out that Corina has a beef with Tessi Milton because Tessi never plays defense, and also is a shallow cool popular girl who probably doesn’t even notice that Corina has a beef with her; also, like all shallow cool popular girls everywhere, Tessi is a whiz at social media and such, and by extension has good ideas for raising the girls’ basketball team’s profile, and one of those ideas is getting Vic Doucette and his wacky antics on the PA system for the girls’ team too. But this has set up a dilemma! Should Vic take on the extra duties and impress a pretty girl? Or should he spend more time with his real friends, his “go-tos”, who are so important to him that they haven’t been seen or mentioned in this entire storyline so far? Once we’ve settled this, we can talk about how root bear should not cause severe jaundice, no matter how much of it you drink.

Hagar the Horrible, 2/5/21

So Helga thinks Hamlet needs to learn about … having sex with plants? I don’t want to judge about this foreign culture, but I’m not so sure about this one.

Marvin, 2/5/21

Ha ha, ladies be shopping, amiright fellas? And fellas … fellas be eating! Ladies presumably gain access to the nutrients they need via some other process. Is it shopping, maybe? We have our best fella scientists working on this and will report back when we know more.

Comments are closed

“I mean, just look at this guilty-lookin’ dude”

Post Content

Marvin, 1/31/21

I feel like I’ve touched on this in a few recent posts, but I want to talk about it in slightly more detail today: I have become somewhat worried lately about coming across like one of those people who do ninety-minute YouTubes where they dissect all the “mistakes” in a movie, intending to “prove” that the filmmakers are idiots but mostly proving that they’re focused on minutia and not really taking in the big picture. Like, with today’s Marvin: I feel like before I go in on how weird it is, I need to establish that yes, I’m 100% aware that the idea that these characters are sort of like adults with adult worries and problems but are also babies isn’t something that’s wrong, in the sense of an IMDB “goofs” entry for Looks Who’s Talking that says “The movie depicts talking babies, but all these characters are far too young to be capable of idiomatic human speech.” I’m fully aware that the they’re-babies-but-they’re-not tension is itself the joke-radiation in which this whole strip is bathed. I’m just saying, if you’re inviting us to imagine babies who are capable of thinking, in very adult ways, about their future, and one of those babies is stressed about her parental expectations about her future education and extracurricular activities, and the other one is apparently planning to keep on shitting his own pants well into junior high — well, the “error” you’ve made is one of judgement, not world-building.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 1/31/21

The text of the solution to this crime sort of implies that Slylock has set up this mystery to teach these animals about the complex web of institutions and processes that make up the industrial civilization they’ve taken from the humans — that cans of pea soup don’t just grown on trees, but must be purchased from a store, where someone places the can on the shelf, and someone else drove the can there in a truck from a warehouse, and it got to that warehouse from a factory, and so and and so forth back up the supply chain. But the drawing makes it seem like he’s mostly saying “See this guy? This is Count Weirdly. You see him, your job is easy. If he’s one of the suspects, he fuckin’ did it, man.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/31/21

Obviously I know that, in this fallen, degraded age, newspapers feel free to print unspeakable filth in the comics section without shame. Still, even I thought there were some limits; but now that we see a proper Hootin’ Holler matron depicted in fully color without her kerchief, hair all exposed — well, now I know there truly is no depravity to which these people won’t sink.