Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/7/19

I regret to inform you that Barney Google is not only interacting with Beetle Bailey but is in fact crossing over with the entire family of trusted King Features comic brands. His whimsical journey got real dark today, as he and Spark Plug encounter the secret holding room — a drab holding cell, without any art or decoration of any kind — where all of the syndicate’s babies are warehoused in between bouts of saying or thought-ballooning the darndest things. Yes, PJ, Trixie, Marvin, the (I think) baby from Baby Blues and, uh, some other baby are left alone for days at a time, presumably stewing in their own dirty diapers. Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t bring horses inside, for, uh, diaper-related reasons? Jesus, years of making fun of Marvin have really damaged my brain.

Marvin, 6/7/19

Speaking of which, here’s today’s Marvin, which is about pissing yourself! But, more importantly, it’s also about the fact that in the Marvinverse, the Army’s officer corps has become a sort of hereditary aristocracy, with ranks handed down from father to son and a military ethos pervading every aspect of members’ lives, right down to bathroom stuff.

Post Content

Six Chix, 5/14/19

The most prevalent forms of urban fauna in my neck of the woods are feral cats and coyotes, so I had to check to see of “Deer Be Gone” spray was an actual thing — it is, and it’s a supposedly non-toxic liquid that just adds an unpleasant flavor to plants. Still, the deer’s panicked reaction has me sticking with my initial take on this cartoon, which is that the lady was originally levelling a rifle at the deer until someone at the syndicate remembered that killing Bambi’s mom tested badly with audiences.

Marvin, 5/14/19

You have to really respect Marvin for constantly innovating in its core mission, which is to present you with scenarios where one character comes in unwanted contact with the feces of another character, much to the pooping character’s delight.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/15/19

Oh, man, remember when the boys got the eggs out of the fridge? I don’t, because we never actually saw it in this strip, but it sure would’ve been fun to see! More fun than today’s strip, in which we’re explicitly told that literally nothing of note happened.

Post Content

Mother Goose and Grimm, 4/18/19

It’s kind of funny how America’s stereotypes of “Brooklyn” (which at one point had official signs at the entrance to the borough that said “FUHGEDDABOUTIT” on them) and New Jersey kind of blend together. This speaks, it seems to me, both to the ongoing story of immigrant life in America, in which communities plant in the city and then slowly move to the suburbs over a few generations as longtime residence brings acculturation and wealth, and just to most people in “Real America”‘s inability to distinguish between the diverse parts of the greater New York Area. Anyway, this has just been a set of musings trigged by today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, a nationally syndicated newspaper comic in which a fly and a rat go head to head for the right to feast on a pigeon’s corpse.

Marvin, 4/18/19

The best part of this strip, to me, is when Marvin locks eyes with us and smiles slyly in the final panel, implicating us all in this gross, petty little exchange. “See, it’s not just me,” he’s saying, “my whole family is real dicks all the way down. Yours too, probably!”