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Marvin, 12/15/16

Finally, Marvin has come up with a running joke that I like even less than the running jokes about Marvin or other characters pissing or shitting: The running joke where Marvin’s dad is all like “haha, wives, amiright fellas?” I think the key to understanding today’s strip, in which Marvin’s dad quips dead-eyed about the power relationships in his marital and professional lives and his resentments appertaining thereto, is the phone his equally stone-faced co-worker is handing him. Notice that it’s a classic phone handset, not a cell phone, and yet there’s no cord attaching it to anything. My guess is that it’s a prop phone, and that these two aren’t in an office at all, but rather on stage at the premiere show for their terrible two-man sketch group, Extremely Hack Misogyny.

Gasoline Alley, 12/15/16

I wasn’t sure exactly where we’d be going with the tale of Chipper the aging physician’s assistant. This is a strip that spent literally eight weeks talking about fucking scrapbooking, so I have to admit that I’m pleasantly surprised that the direction chosen is apparently “Chipper begins his descent into madness.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/15/16

“What I’m trying to say is, if Sarah dies, do you want Linda to be your daughter? I mean, they look a lot alike, and this way you’d get to skip puberty.”

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Mary Worth, 12/10/16

Earlier this week, Mary suggested that the idea that a woman shouldn’t date men significantly younger than them is outdated, sexist dogma — but it was important to analyze your emotional motivations before diving into a sexual relationship quickly after a breakup. Today, Iris muses that the factors that drive us aren’t always cut and dry, and to try to isolate the pure from the petty is fruitless and ultimately paralyzing. This is probably the most emotionally self-actualized Mary Worth storyline in human history, guys!

Marvin, 12/10/16

Speaking of emotional self-actualization, Marvin is still doing jokes about its various characters pissing on things, and frankly doesn’t give a damn what you think about it.

Beetle Bailey, 12/10/16

BREAKING: BEETLE BAILEY ACKNOWLEDGES THAT WOMEN HAVE SEXUAL AUTOMONY, FEMINISM DECLARES DEFINITIVE DEFEAT OF THE PATRIARCHY

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Spider-Man, 12/2/16

Ah ha, our new Newspaper Spider-Man plot is under way, and its antagonist is … Ronan, The Accuser! This is as good an opportunity as any for me to remind you that, despite the fact that I have made my name as a “comics guy” and have a love of Mary Worth and Mark Trail veering into dangerously unironic territory, I find most superhero comics extremely dopey, not least because they feature villains named things like “Ronan, The Accuser,” (and sorry, purists, I have decided that comma is a canonical part of his name and will be using it in every reference from now on). As moronic as Ronan, The Accuser seems and as dumb as his conflict with Spider-Man will inevitably be, at least you have to respect the franchise-driven media marketing strategy that brought him to newspapers everywhere. After all, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is coming out in a mere, uh, six months, and so we need to start building buzz now for when Ronan, The Accuser squares off against Peter Quill and our other heroes, just like he did in the first film, where they defeated him and he … uh … died? So he won’t be in the sequel? Man, Newspaper Spider-Man never misses an opportunity to not be useful in any way.

Marvin, 12/2/16

Haha, check out how grotesquely smug Jeff looks in panel three, because the only part of his life he has in order is strong-arming his wife into getting a job! This is some extremely relatable content right here. Marvin: come for the poop jokes, stay for the economic anxiety expressed through marital discomfort!