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Mary Worth, 8/5/20

Hey, have you been wondering what Toby’s been up to in the two months since we last saw her, back when she was expressing mild trepidation over having agreed to make a dessert for the next Charterstone meeting? Well, turns out she’s been 100% fucking up the dessert she agreed to make for the next Charterstone meeting! The best part is definitely Toby looking at her kitchen iPad or whatever that is and yelling “What the…?” like she’s shocked to learn her goal is supposed to be a loaf of some sort rather than the two big bowls of goo she’s managed to produce, but I really enjoy the little details, like the fact that she appears to have just cracked a raw egg onto her countertop and is it letting it sit there breeding salmonella.

Daddy Daze, 8/5/20

Obviously it’s just yet another instance of slapdash syndicate coloring, but Daddy Daze Daddy’s icy white skin in panel one makes it look like he was under some kind of wizard’s curse that can only be lifted by an baby’s smooch. It’s pretty creepy! Not as creepy as the overall premise of the strip, which is that a terribly sad and isolated single parent spends all his time projecting his increasingly manic and baroque fantasies onto his preverbal infant, but creepy nonetheless.

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/2/20

Man, Funky Winkerbean is really going for it with this fire, huh? This strip strongly reminds me of one from 2009 (note to self: embark on a rigorous journey of self-discovery to learn why I have instant recall of eleven-year-old Funky Winkerbeans) where Funky gets a text from his doctor about his cancerous prostate while a TV in the background drones on about the collapse of the economy. Today’s strip has a different vibe, though, in that the foreground action is actually upbeat for once. I’m assuming that everyone’s happiness is going to be upended when the fire destroys, you know, everything, but it would be kind of funny if we never hear about it again, but we should just keep in mind that it was there during a happy moment, like a skull hidden in the corner of a painting from one of the Dutch Masters to remind us of our own looming mortality.

Judge Parker, 8/2/20

I’m not really sure if calling the wife of one of your opponent’s primary backers is the “obvious angle,” actually, but I guess I’m only beginning to appreciate how byzantine and vicious the politics are of a small suburban town in Connecticut (?), where I assume the primary job of the municipal government is to negotiate contracts for snowplowing services.

Mary Worth, 8/2/20

Aww, despite her initial hostility, Madi has finally made friends with both Mary and Greta. Will she also bond with Saul? I hope not! I hope she keeps leaving her clothes all over his condo for the next three months, until her CIA assassin dad comes back to collect her!

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Blondie, 7/27/20

Look, I’m not going to complain about Blondie doing a toilet paper shortage joke now even though the toilet paper shortage that marked the early pandemic has largely abated; I understand long syndicate lead times and such. I’m not even going to gripe about Blondie half-assing it when it comes to coronavirus jokes in general, doing strips that clearly reference the pandemic without fully integrating it into the characters’ world. It’s fine, really! You want to do some topical jokes but also don’t want to upend everything about how you do the strip! It’s really OK! What I do have a problem with is how today’s strip, in which the Bumstead family is so obviously overjoyed at Blondie’s shopping find, has forced me to contemplate everyone’s almost certainly poo-encrusted buttholes. Look at how excited Daisy is! What horrors has she seen?

Mark Trail, 7/27/20

Uhhh, it looks like the the abrupt end to James Allen’s time as Mark Trail’s writer/artist has resulted in the abrupt … suspension? … of the Jeremy Cartwright storyline four weeks later, with a sudden jump into an Elrod-era story of animal abandonment. Normally I love a good animal rescue story, of course, but still: did Jeremy ever get that drink or what???

Mary Worth, 7/27/20

“In a way, by helping Madi, she’s helping us again as well, since we won’t have to help Madi. We can enjoy ourselves here, far from Madi, until … when did her dad say he was getting back from Venezuela again? September?”