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Marvin, 8/15/18

I honestly neither expect nor require Marvin, a legacy syndicated newspaper comic strip about a baby who poops a lot, to be up-to-date on current fashion trends, but I do think it’s a little awkward that in its attempt to depict a modern-day hipster they’ve overshot and given him a fashy, the haircut beloved by your more upscale white supremacists these days. Since Miller is the third most common surname for Jews in the United States, it certainly gives a very different reading to “they may not even let you in”!

Spider-Man, 8/15/18

Oh, Kingpin, you think you’re going to be some kind of bad-ass real estate criminal, but you’ve got a lot to learn about branding! The sort of hipster “pioneers” you want to attract in your moves to gentrify Chinatown will be positively thrilled to live above the alley where MJ Parker’s first husband was brutally murdered by a Chinese gang. Then, five years later, once MJ has been married to a fellow celebrity more suited to her current lifestyle, you jack up the rent by $1,000 a month and then the finance industry people move in.

Mary Worth, 8/15/18

This is definitely one way for Tommy to gently explain to Brandy that he has no plans to put out any time soon.

Pluggers, 8/15/18

Sure, it makes sense that Branson, Missouri, is ground zero for the plugger orgy scene, but I for one could’ve gone my whole life in happy ignorance of this fact.

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Marvin, 7/31/18

It’s weird how the Marvin cast of babies walk around unsupervised, talk, can grasp object permanence, etc., and really the only thing that marks them out as infants is that they’re short and aren’t potty trained. Almost as if someone just really likes the idea of functional adults shitting themselves deliberately on the regular, and who am I to judge! Ha ha, just kidding, I judge constantly, and in non-shitting judging news, why would a baby be at all interested in a fountain of youth? I guess maybe as a baby he recognizes the extreme jealousy his youth inspires in others and seeks to monetize it; or, conversely, maybe to him “youth” means young adulthood, and he aims to accelerate his fellow babies’ aging process until their physical development matches their mental state. They’re still gonna shit their pants, though! Just a hunch I have about that.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/31/18

I’d always just pegged Parson Tuttle as an uncomplicated grifter, but now I see he has a much darker design: to use Scripture as a recruiting tool to raise an army of child soldiers, like an Appalachian Kony. Can the women in this community hold the line against the total violent breakdown of their community?

Family Circus, 7/31/18

I have to admit that seeing a sugar-drunk Jeffy announcing that he’s discovered he can just guzzle syrup straight from the bottle and plans to continue to do so made me smile. The only way this panel could be even better would be if, instead just a single demure droplet of syrup at the corner of his mouth, he was completely covered in the stuff, like he had poured it over his head and let ooze down and form a delicious, sticky mask. Can’t even open his eyes because of the syrup and happy as a clam, a dumb, gross, syrup-soaked clam.

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Gil Thorp, 7/17/18

So it’s mid-July, and Gil Thorp’s “spring” plot is still happening, but at least it seems to be getting to a semi-satisfying climax, which is this: Barry’s mom is sorry she didn’t intervene over the years, but now that her drunk husband is in jail, it’s safe for her to tell her son that, yup, he’s an asshole. Where she really breaks new ground in the world of Gil Thorp is by asserting that becoming an asshole just to get better at high school baseball isn’t actually cool or good. The whole thing is coming off as kind of an intervention with Barry, and I appreciate the tack Ace Reporter Dafne is taking. Barry, so many preppy jocks become intellectual stoner guys in college! High school libertarians are suddenly freshman-year socialists! Why, less than a month ago, Dafne herself was white! All you have to do is not act like every single interaction with another person is a contest for dominance that you’re on the verge of losing and have to pull out all the stops to win! We believe in you! You can do this!

Hagar the Horrible, 7/17/18

An underrated and extremely unsettling running gag in Hagar the Horrible is “Lucky Eddie’s life partner is a mermaid, whose daughter he sold to a zoo.” Anyway, since Hagar and Helga have actually double-dated with Eddie and his fish-woman paramour, I’m not sure why he’s pretending to be ignorant here. C’mon, Hagar, this is a post-The Shape Of Water world here, fishfucking is totally OK now!

Hi and Lois, 7/17/18

Usually it’s Thirsty’s yard that’s depicted as being littered with trash, as one of this strip’s understated class/classiness markers, so I guess you can understand why the visibly rumpled drunkard feels the need to get a little dig in about the Flagstons’ slovenliness. Still, since Hi is Thirsty’s best and, as near as we can tell, only friend, it does seem like an ill-advised move.

Marvin, 7/17/18

FINALLY, MARVIN WILL FACE PROSECUTION FOR HIS MANY CRIMES