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Funky Winkerbean, 10/21/19

OK, here’s the deal: in general, I like it when the characters in Funky Winkerbean suffer, because I find them all morally and personally repellent. However, I don’t like it when they use their own suffering as proof of their nobility, and I actively despite it when everyone falls all over themselves to praise the sufferers for being amazing. Sure, Mason could play a dumb “action hero,” like Starbuck Jones, a character millions of people love and want to see on screen, or, as panel two shows suggests, like Wally, a guy who fought in a war and was held captive for years and now works at a depressing pizza parlor for a living, but he’d rather be remembered (by Oscar and Golden Globe voters) as a real hero: a guy who stayed married to his wife when she was diagnosed with cancer and was more or less supportive of her until she died, after which point he started cashing in and never stopped. At least when people gave the characters in Woody Wilson-era Judge Parker undeserved praise and cash, it was funny.

Gil Thorp, 10/21/19

Chet, I’m pretty sure that once you’ve achieved the rank of don within the mafia, you pay other people to act out, pull teachers’ hair, and throw scissors at classmates for you. I’m gonna need you to come back with a better metaphor for this one!

Dennis the Menace, 10/21/19

Not sure what I find funnier here: the idea that Dennis has some elaborate curtain/roller-shade window treatment in his room, that he uses his roller-shade for his “bad boy” art (a picture of a child with his tongue stuck out), or that this self-professed “menace” is too cowardly to let his mother know about his vandalism/budding art career.

Mary Worth, 10/21/19

Hot on the heels of discovering that Iris is fucking herself into a state of exhaustion with her new boytoy, we now learn that Wilbur is focusing on just singing with Estelle because he, too, worries about his own sexual stamina, as he idly stares at this bottle of “VIGOR VITAMINS” at the sketchy supplement store at the mall and wonders if they’ll be enough to restore his declining libido. There has been lots of talk in the comments about Iris and Wilbur improbably ending up back together, and finally we have a good reason why they should: they’re both just too tired to do it anymore, and honestly it would be kind of relief to be with someone who doesn’t expect anything from them, sexually.

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Gasoline Alley, 10/20/19

Oh my goodness, Gasoline Alley trufans: Gasoline Alley’s 101st anniversary is coming up in just one month! Are you ready to spread the word, with the #One hundred and one hashtag? You’ve got thirty days to figure out what a hashtag is and what you’re supposed to do with it! The clock is ticking!

Mary Worth, 10/20/19

Oh, in case you thought there was going to be some big mystery about why Iris is so tired, there isn’t. She and Zak have just been fucking too much! He’s going to give her one night where she gets to sleep the whole time. Then: back to the fucking.

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Hi and Lois, 10/16/19

Because I’m both a comics obsessive and a transit obsessive, I’m reasonably sure that the only time we’ve ever seen Hi on the subway was during this non-canon crossover event. That tells me that Hi is not on his typical commute, which I assume usually takes him along the auxiliary interstate highway that connects his pedestrian-hostile suburban subdivision to the pedestrian-hostile office park where Foofram Industries has its regional HQ. But not today. Today, Hi has abandoned his car in the parking lot of the outermost stop on the regional transit system and is heading into the city to vanish forever into his new life. This phone call will just serve to postpone by a few precious hours the moment when Lois realizes he’s not coming back and starts calling the cops.

Mary Worth, 10/16/19

Wow, remember back in the ’00s, when downtown Santa Royale was a bleak slum full of thugs and fallen women where Mary was terrified to venture? Well, as in many cities, it became an outpost of Santa Royale’s boho arts community, who were attracted by cheap rents and embraced the aesthetic of the grit they helped displace, leading normies to conclude that the neighborhood was “getting better,” with in turn brought us here, to the final stage of gentrification: tech millionaires living in huge townhomes that take up almost an entire lot, which they presumably demolished the Downtown Women’s Shelter to build.

Judge Parker, 10/16/19

“Then I remembered that we’re, like, bonkers rich! Remember that time we bought an RV on whim that we didn’t need or even really want? So yeah, go ahead and build like three more commercial structures on our vast compound if you want, whatever.”

Funky Winkerbean, 10/16/19

“That’s why I had Bull murdered and made it look like a suicide! Wait, did I say that part out loud?”