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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.

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Crock, 8/18/20

Crock is in perpetual reruns now, and it’s hard to tell when exactly any given strip was composed, which is fine when they’re making light-hearted jokes about the grueling century-long French colonial occupation of Algeria, but can get wonky when the strip tries to grapple with “current events.” Like, I guess this dates from the period (the ’90s, I think?) where Wal-Mart’s rapid expansion to retail dominance was noteworthy instead of just a historical footnote to the transition to Amazon’s stranglehold on all commerce. Anyway, I’m not quite sure what the joke here is supposed to be. Is Grossie waiting by the sign with her cart a “women be shopping” gag, which misses the fact that the gag is specifically about shopping as a high-end indulgence and doesn’t really work if it’s “women be shopping for low-priced daily necessities”? Or is her knowing grin just supposed to convey something like “Eh? Eh? Capitalism? Eh?”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/18/20

This massive wildfire may have displaced hundreds of thousands of people, but at least it’s giving Marianne a chance to really understand what it was like to be married to Les, an opportunity that she surely regrets so, so much.

Daddy Daze, 8/18/20

Is he … is he afraid his son will eventually want to have sex with a brain? Is that the joke here?

The Phantom, 8/18/20

Did … did the Phantom murder or terrorize a couple of waitresses so his daughter and her friend could have a job that earned them a little pocket money? Is that the joke here?

Marvin, 8/18/20

Ha ha, it’s funny because Marvin’s poops are more deadly than a unprecedented worldwide pandemic!

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Gil Thorp, 6/27/20

So, uh, the slobs vs. snobs battle between Milford and the alternative school is ending actually fairly realistically, with the snobs kicking the crap out of the slobs, to the extent that one of the Milford kids came in to pitch for the other team and is offering advice to try to staunch the bleeding. This is pretty sad, actually, but I’m hoping the bad kids are just lulling the Mudlarks into a sense of complacency, so that their guard will be down when the stabbing starts

Dick Tracy, 6/27/20

Ugh, you guys, Shaky sucks as a villain so bad, he’s so low-stakes and his personality is dumb as well, like the only thing that’s interesting about him is that he’s a biological sex toy and they haven’t even talked about that except that one time. His current grift involves stealing belt buckles for some reason and, when confronted with his crime, he both denies it and hurls the belt buckle in question at the cops, and somehow he managed to make even that boring.

Marvin, 6/27/20

Folks, we all know Marvin is a comic strip about people going to the bathroom and dogs going to the bathroom. But did you know it’s also about birds going to the bathroom? Truly, the lesson here is that no matter how secure you feel in your position, you should never stop innovating, creatively.