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Marvin, 7/31/19

I guess i’s a step forward that today’s Marvin absolutely infuriated me for entirely non-poop related reasons. No, I’m just furious about how badly this punchline is botched! There are actually two perfectly good ways this basic joke could be done:

JOKE STRUCTURE #1 (kinda basic, but still very effective)

PANEL ONE:
BERNIE: Remember that old TV show Cheers, where everybody at the bar knows your name?
ROY: Yeah

PANEL TWO:
BERNIE: Well, it’s like that when I go to the medical building

PANEL THREE:
THERE IS NO PANEL THREE BECAUSE THE FIRST TWO PANELS ACTUALLY CONVEY EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW! THE MEDICAL BUILDING IS WHERE EVERYONE KNOWS BERNIE’S NAME, BECAUSE HE’S OLD AND SICK A LOT! JOKE OVER!

JOKE STRUCTURE #2 (maybe a little daring for a comic strip, but I think it would work)

PANEL ONE:
BERNIE: Remember that old TV show Cheers, where everybody at the bar knows your name?
ROY: Yeah

PANEL TWO:
BERNIE: Well, it’s like that when I go to the medical building

PANEL THREE:
BERNIE: Everyone there is a drunk!

But no, instead, we just get a third panel that doesn’t add any more twists to the punchline, but rather just explains what the punchline was. It doesn’t work! It doesn’t work at all! I almost wish Marvin had shit his pants, to distract us!

Dick Tracy, 7/31/19

Don’t worry yourself, Vitamin: I’m sure that the theater, which you literally own, felt absolutely free to make a decision as to whether to cast you in the role you so transparently and desperately want based entirely on artistic criteria. If you don’t believe me, believe the adoring, much younger woman you knocked up!

Six Chix, 7/31/19

I’ve been staring at this for a long time and trying to figure out why all the action is a circle in the middle of the panel surrounded by blackness. I guess it’s supposed to be like we’re looking at the scene through a camera, with the implication being “Sure, we live in a society where in order to afford the most basic necessities we might need to leverage our ability to inspire pity on social media, but at least we’re also under continuous surveillance”?

Dennis the Menace, 7/31/19

I accept that Dennis’s menacing levels have waxed and waned over the years, but I have to draw the line at this sort of wide-eyed sub-Family Circus-ism delivered while cradling a teddy bear. The only way this is at all appropriate if it’s part of a larger plan to send Joey spiraling down a dark path experimenting with hallucinogens too young and too often.

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Dick Tracy, 6/27/19

Hey, remember last summer when Sawtooth took in a midnight showing of Rocky Horror in order to bite a guy to death and Sam Catchem happened to be there? I guess Rocky Horror is one of Dick Tracy’s “things” now and you know what Dick Tracy does with its “things”: gives a villain a really on-the-nose name related to them and a corresponding facial deformity. Looking forward to seeing how Tony Rocky Horror’s skull shape somehow coveys the concept of unintentional camp!

Gil Thorp, 6/27/19

OH MY GOD I immediately take back everything bad I said about Gil Thorp yesterday because today we learn that this summer’s real Beloved Character From The Past is in fact Hadley V. Baxendale! Hadley was the star of the very first Gil Thorp storyline covered on this site, which involved her and her boyfriend and fellow feminist agitator Steve Luhm fighting for full-sized lockers and equal cheer squad support for the girls’ teams. I’ve always wondered what happened to her over the last fifteen years, and since she partnered up with a pro basketball player/intellectual while her ex became a teve dropped out of college and became a bitter janitor, I’d say she’s doing pretty well for herself!

My only complaint is that the comics colorists don’t know what to do with the front of her hair, which is supposed to be a Sontag-esque grey streak, which she’s had since high school. Also I’m not really sure what “you were” is supposed to mean in the final panel. Like, did Coach Thorp remember “Oh, Hadley’s like super political, she probably isn’t going to change her name after marriage, which I guess means … she’s going to change her name … before marriage? That’s how it works, right? I mean, she’s gotta change her name sometime.”

Shoe, 6/27/19

The thing I like best about this strip is that Skyler is sitting in this chair, inches away from the TV, his eyes heavy with ennui, just like we’ve seen his uncle again and again and again. It’s as if he’s daring the Perfesser to make some snide remark about millennials and their darn screens.

Marvin, 6/27/19

Remember when Vince Neil, at the height of his Mötley Crüe decadence, did an incredibly insincere anti-drug PSA? That’s pretty much the vibe I’m getting from today’s Marvin. “Kids, you might think from the usual jokes in this strip that sitting around in a diaperful of your own piss is fun. But what if I told you about, uh, butt mold? Pretty gross, huh?” [goes back to making jokes about how sitting around in a diaperful of your own piss is fun three times a week for the next six years]

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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.