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Marvin, 7/7/16

So it turns out Marvin’s dad didn’t go to jail, and is now planning on taking his wife and child on vacation to the extremely cheap destination of “Swindletopia.” Today, his father-in-law gloms onto the trip using transparent emotional manipulation! The brief forays this strip takes into the lives of its adult characters makes you long for its usual witty and subtle baby poop jokes.

Gasoline Alley, 7/7/16

I’m trying, I’m really trying to not get worked up over the various historical horrors going on with this coin. I won’t goggle at the fact that the strip managed to accurately learn that Nero’s full name began with “Nero Claudius” but get everything else wrong: that he was never referred to as such on coins, only as “Nero Caesar”; that the picture looks almost nothing like Nero’s real coin portraits; that the “A.D.” dating system wasn’t developed until the 6th century A.D. and the pagan Romans wouldn’t have used it as a dating formula in 64 even it was around. I am, however, going to get mad about the fact that this terrible coin changes size radically between panels, appearing to be about the size of a quarter in panels one and three and about the size of a smallish plate in panel two.

Gil Thorp, 7/7/16

Oh, man, looks like Boo’s death is setting up a wacky summer Gil Thorp plot in which the kids discover nihilism! Watch them veer wildly between sullen inaction and wild self-destructive behavior, all while muttering “What’s the point of the playdowns? What’s the point of the annual bonfire? What’s the point of anything?”

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Six Chix, 6/24/16

It’s very sad seeing this grim future environmental dystopia whose inhabitants consider a scattering of trees in an open field to be a “forest.” This comic serves as a warning that merely “liking” activist posts on Facebook does not bring about meaningful political change.

Marvin, 6/24/16

DemonCat is a regular poster in the comments section of this very blog, and a little Googling has shown that all of these are the usernames of regular commenters on King Features’ official Comics Kingdom site, which is where Marvin is hosted. So, congrats, DemonCat and everyone else! You got a shout-out from Marvin! May God have mercy on your souls.

Judge Parker, 6/24/16

Wow, maybe the Parker-Drivers are more business savvy then I thought? They know that modern affluent consumers aren’t looking for mere products; they want stories and experiences, which means that they’ll buy Neddy’s amateurishly designed clothes because it makes them feel connected to the celebrities they idolize and vaguely patriotic for buying something Made in the USA! They’ll buy them at least once or twice, anyway, long enough for Neddy to book enough revenue to make the company attractive to some international conglomerate that’ll move the whole operation to Bangladesh.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/24/16

Wait, did Mopey Pete just say “may-soan” or “may-son-ee”? This is going to be bothering me for days.

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Marvin, 6/20/16

Have you guys ever seen the Disney channel TV show Dog With A Blog? It’s about a dog who can speak, read, and write English, which is a pretty amazing set of skills for a dog to have! Really, the fact that he choses to use his language abilities to create and maintain a website consisting of posts in reverse chronological order is one of the less interesting things about him, ygou’d think, and yet that’s still what made it into the title of the show. I’ve seen exactly one episode of Dog With A Blog; in it, Stan, the titular dog, learns that dogs only live to be around 15 or so, and becomes obsessed with creating a video of himself so everyone will remember him and his amazing abilities after he dies. The kids in the family who own him, who are the only people who know about his talents, then have to find and destroy this tape, so his secrets aren’t revealed. This is a television show marketed to children, and it’s amazingly grim.

Dog With A Blog premiered in 2012, and I’m … reasonably sure that the “Bitsy’s Blog” bit in Marvin predates this? Somehow I’ve managed to have never covered Bitsy blogging on my site before, as near as I can tell, though it’s definitely been a thing. Anyway, if Marvin needs cash, maybe it should consider suing Disney, a company with deep pockets. Just imagine! The strip wouldn’t have to maintain even the tiniest shred of decorum necessary to still be getting syndication revenue from newspapers. It can just go ahead and become a full-on scat porn webcomic.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/20/16

Way back when Mason Jarr was first introduced as a character, he was the guy playing Les in the abortive TV movie based on Lisa’s Story, and was portrayed as a comical moron, in keeping with the storyline’s overall theme, which was that Hollywood is bad and everyone except for Les is a soulless hack. Now that he’s become a regular cast member, he’s been given some sympathetic gravitas, by which I mean he thinks and talks about death constantly, but it’s nice to see the character getting back to his roots and contemplating whether “Mason Jarre” would be a more dignified spelling of his extremely silly name.

Beetle Bailey, 6/20/16

Not that I’m an expert or anything, but wouldn’t soldiers on a hike in training be carrying … equipment of some kind? Like a backpack, or a rifle, or something? I guess what we’re seeing here is that our heroes have finally been assigned into combat, but have been defeated due to incompetence. Having abandoned their weapons, they’re retreating in disarray, and Sarge, desperately trying to keep their unit from disintegrating entirely, is about to resort to extreme measures.

Mary Worth, 6/20/16

Oh look, it’s a new (maybe?) Mary Worth plot, and here on day one we have the battle of the waistlines! Mary and Wilbur appear to be the same height, but Mary’s got her trusty grey sansabelts hiked all the way up over her navel, while Wilbur lets his shirt cascade down past his waist like a mighty waterfall. I look forward to the dramatic visual interplay between these very different approaches over the course of the week!