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Gil Thorp, 8/10/21

I’ve been making lots of jokes about not being able to understand any of the golf lingo in Gil Thorp, but guess what: I’ve been carefully analyzing these strips, trying to squeeze as much meaning out of them as my feeble non-golfing brain can understand, and with today’s strip I have cracked the code: Hendricks is a golf scammer! Specifically, he’s much better at golf than his handicap would indicate, hitting some great shots and then deliberately hitting terrible ones to lull everyone into a false sense of complacency (and keeping his handicap artificially high, or possibly low, however it works in golf). Anyway, I feel a little embarrassed to be as excited as I am about figuring this out, but at least I’m not excited about figuring out how much a golf ball costs after crawling around some field to find it.

Mary Worth, 8/10/21

Remember the time Mary, Jeff’s ostensible girlfriend, picked up a dude at his own mother’s funeral and he never noticed? Remember the time she spent an erotically charged week in New York with a handsome Broadway actor and he never noticed? Drew’s take on his dad’s romantic ineptitude checks out, is what I’m saying. At least he’ll get over it fast when Mary finally does finally leave him, right? (No, absolutely not, he will whine about it endlessly.)

Curtis, 8/10/21

All social media platforms, Tomaura? Even LinkedIn? I don’t think a video of Curtis getting mauled by a polar bear is going to do very good numbers on LinkedIn.

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Crankshaft, 8/9/21

You know, after many years in the comics-mocking biz, you get somewhat inured to the foibles of the daily strips. That’s why it’s good to get a fresh perspective sometimes, like when my wife saw this Crankshaft over my shoulder and said, in tones of increasing incredulity, “Wait, is that the joke? There’s no more to it? Like, there’s not another panel? He just said the wrong word? That’s the joke?” Yes! That is, in fact, the joke. But the thing that makes this a character-driven comic strip is how angry he looks while he says it, for no good reason. That’s our Crankshaft! He’s old, dumb, and mean!

Funky Winkerbean, 8/9/21

At least Crankshaft has a joke, though! Funky Winkerbean is a more story-driven strip, but it really is supposed to have punchlines. Maybe … something from Mason about “unwrapping” some surprise? Never thought I’d be over here demanding a smirk-accompanied sub-pun from Funky Winkerbean, but now I realize that’s the base level of effort I expect from the Funkyverse strips.

Mary Worth, 8/9/21

Mary Worth, of course, doesn’t need anything so vulgar as a “joke” or a “punchline” to be the most hilarious comic strip in the paper. Not sure what’s funnier: that Drew feels compelled to compliment Mary’s cooking even though he wasn’t able to tell exactly what kind of spherical starch blobs accompanied the lamb (“probably they’re … root vegetables? of some kind?”) or that Dr. Jeff is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice — using his highly trained surgeon’s hands to wash the dishes like he’s the help — just to make sure his son gets meddled properly.

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Mary Worth, 8/6/21

One of my favorite things in Mary Worth is when we cut away from the main action of the current plot to other characters, commenting cattily on the main action of the current plot. It’s more fun if the characters in the main plot are dipshits who deserve to be made fun of and, guess what, it’s Mary Worth so they almost always are. Dr. Drew is no Wilbur, but he’s dopey enough that I really enjoy Mary’s “They seemed to be very different people,” which if you’ve read enough Mary Worth like I have you immediately recognize as simultaneously one of the most savage and cutting things anybody has ever said but also not something explicit enough that she’s going to have to walk it back like Jeff will when Drew inevitably tracks Ashlee down and theatrically refuses to even consider a prenup.

Shoe, 8/6/21

This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, but I have boundless respect for the fact that the Shoe artistic team finds new ways every day to depict bird-men who are just crushingly depressed. Look at the Perfesser in that second panel! That’s not just a man (a bird-man, I guess) who’s being berated by his boss; that’s a man who’s been berated by his boss over and over again and it’s brought him into a profoundly dark mindset. I sincerely hope the artist is working from a place of boundless empathy for this character, but doesn’t find him too relatable, if you follow me!