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Hagar the Horrible, 9/19/16

Just to prove to you the lengths I go to in order to make my silly jokes about comics on my blog, here are some fun facts I learned while researching today’s Hagar the Horrible:

• The common origin story of coffee cultivation — that an Ethiopian shepherd noticed goats getting jumpy when they ate certain berries — is probably a myth. The first written record of coffee being drunk comes from Yemen in the 1400s, which explains why there’s no coffee for Eddie to drink, five centuries earlier and thousands of miles to the north.
• Anxiety and worry are the end products of parallel linguistic evolution: both ultimately descend from words (in Latin and proto-German, respectively) that mean “to strangle.”

Anyway! I don’t know if those facts add up to much, except that maybe Eddie — who Hagar has already turned his back on in that final panel — has felt phantom hands around his throat for a long time, and it has nothing to do with caffeine withdrawal.

Gasoline Alley, 9/19/16

I’ve been reading the non-adventures of the chumps in Gasoline Alley for more than a decade and while I’m vaguely aware that they’re all part of a huge, sprawling family, I still couldn’t tell you how any of them are related to any of the other ones. Beardy Dude and Ranger Gal are thus connected by a tenuous web of kinship, though that didn’t come up when he guided her forest birth; it’s sort of coming out now, not that I can really follow what the hell’s going on in panel two. Are they visualizing … each other, but younger? Each visualizing his younger self? Why does the kid in the rightmost thought balloon have three legs? Why does he have three legs? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY DOES HE HAVE THREE LEGS

Slylock Fox, 9/19/16

I just want to point out that Slylock is a compulsive ratiocinator. Like, he does it to solve crimes when he doesn’t even need to. “So, I saw the whole thing go down with my own eyes, all you need to do is take down the information. The ape parked his car in the deale–” “IT’S THE ONE WITH THE LICENSE PLATES!!! Right? Right? I said it before you said it! IN YOUR FACE, RABBIT!”

Marvin, 9/19/16

Guys, it’s Monday, so I just want to leave you with an uplifting image: an infant with a thousand-mile stare, openly worrying that someday — maybe someday soon — he’ll become unmoored from any conventional system of morality and perpetrate unspeakable horrors. Let’s all have a super week!

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Judge Parker, 9/14/16

Ever since Sophie and her friends went tumbling down that rain-slicked hillside, Neddy has been on tenterhooks waiting to find out if her dumb little sister managed to ruin her big day, by dying. Turns out she’s alive! Turns out it’s not incredibly inappropriate at all that Rocky lined up those three champaign flutes and held that bottle of bubbly at the ready, waiting for this call. Turns out we’ll never get to see him quietly returning the glasses to the cabinet and putting the bottle back into the fridge, unopened, while Neddy weeps over the terrible loss of publicity, not to mention all the money spent on jumbo cookies for the press, just gone to waste. I’m a little disappointed by this, honestly.

Marvin, 9/14/16

Considering how most babies and dogs actually have their temperature taken, I think we’re finally discovering the limits of what the normally scatologically-obsessed Marvin is allowed to get away with.

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Marvin, 8/21/16

Marvin, you made me laugh. Not with your actual punchline, or the long, belabored lead-up to it. No, what made me laugh was Marvin, apropos of nothing and clearly as bored with his parents as we are, thinking “I want a hot dog!” How often do I have that same thought? Several times a day, to be honest! Shoutout to the Marvin comic of Sunday, August 21, 2016, for creating a moment in which I found its title character actually relatable.

Spider-Man, 8/21/16

I’m an on-the-record fan of the Sunday Spider-Man NEXT! box, but this … this is not its best work. Hey, it’s OK, NEXT! box, I of all people know the pressure of coming up with something funny to say week after week. Sometimes you just have to say “Fuck, so, he’s … going to the ant?” and move on with your life.