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Slylock Fox, 4/16/18

It’s extremely sad to me that Count Weirdly is so constantly persecuted by the Animal authorities because of his eccentricities and (let’s not mince words) species. He’s always coming up with amazing inventions like a functional bipedal robot that’s capable of feeling real affection, but because he’s cut off from traditional funding avenues, the only way he can raise capital to manufacture and market his creations is to market his own reality video content. These shows, which are as popular post-animalpocalypse as they were before, have certain narrative conventions. And so, yes, Weirdly had to structure a narrative arc where he appears to develop and construct Mortty within a single half-hour episode. Was this, strictly speaking, true? No, but isn’t the robot itself achievement enough? Doesn’t everyone assume that so-called “reality” shows are highly edited? Why won’t Slylock leave this innovator alone?

Spider-Man, 4/16/18

Hey, remember when we first came upon Dr. Connors, way back at the beginning of this storyline? He was sneaking out of his janky-ass lab, which he presumably owed a lot of back rent on, and was throwing all his scientific equipment into back of his minivan so he could decamp to his even jankier-ass lab out in the middle of a swamp. I’m not really sure “world’s top scientist” meets the standards of journalistic accuracy we’ve come to expect from the Bugle, is what I’m trying to say.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/16/18

Hey, Darrin and Pete, why not try looking excited or eager about your new gig? Maybe put some effort into arranging your facial expressions so that you look like you’re feeling something other than creeping existential dread! Because honestly, if you go into this endeavor convinced it’s going to fail, it’s going to be less fun for me when it inevitably does.

Mary Worth, 4/16/18

I believe it was George Orwell who once said, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a panel of Wilbur in the shower at least once a week — forever.”

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Gil Thorp, 4/12/18

Hey, guys, remember Aaron Aagard, the hero of last year’s basketball season storyline, who was inconsistent not because he was on drugs but because his mom was, and then he ended up living in a teammate’s basement? Well, he’s playing on the team again this year, it seems. I guess we’ll never know the details, since all media coverage of the Mudlarks has now ceased, which should hopefully break the spell the various high school teams have over Milford in short order and everyone else will get hobbies and Coach Thorp’s budget will get reassigned to the music department and Coach Kaz will have to mortgage his dojo.

Mark Trail, 4/12/18

Based on Mark’s grim facial expression in the final panel, I assume he knows that Jim was crushed to death under the jeep, and is going to allow Marlin to mourn in private. If there’s one thing Mark doesn’t like being around, it’s emotions.

Mary Worth, 4/12/18

I’m not sure what sort of stuff Rick’s sells, exactly, but I’m certainly hoping that Iris and Zak are here to buy, say, a hammock, talking loudly all through their shopping experience about how it’ll easily be converted into a makeshift sex swing.

Crankshaft, 4/12/18

Fun fact: True Crime Addict is a real book, and James Renner is a real person who’s been rendered here relatively faithfully, presumably because he owes someone a terrible debt, or perhaps because he lost a contest.

Spider-Man, 4/12/18

That quote is from the Bible, so in attributing the inerrant word of YHWH to some unspecified “they,” JJJ is proving himself a darn polytheist on top of everything else!

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Gil Thorp, 4/11/18

Well, it was bound to happen: the Social Justice Teens are feeling kind of bad about defeating Marty by goading him into cussing on-air. You’d think they’d take the attitude of “Yay, the sports radio guy who literally nobody liked even before we found out he was a racist isn’t going to be saying rude things about our friends on-air anymore!” But these kids sense, at the periphery of their minds, that they are in fact the current protagonists in an ongoing narrative; and while in real life we actually enjoy getting what we want, within a story a protagonist without an antagonist is dull and lifeless, and they know it.

Mary Worth, 4/11/18

Mary Worth, obviously, doesn’t feel itself restricted by such conventional narrative niceties. Sure, the current storyline of Wilbur’s mid-grade ennui appears to lack dramatic tension, drifting as it is from a little shower singin’ to some light shoe purchasing. But in fact the true interest to the reader is the nature of the story itself: is something actually going to happen one of these days? Or when we picture the future, should we imagine Wilbur thought-ballooning while shopping at various chain stores, forever?

Family Circus, 4/11/18

Generally speaking the circumstances in which you’d eat off a tray like this are that you’re eating dinner in front of the TV, which is literally every child’s fondest wish, so it seems weird that Billy is so outraged here. The prissy face really sells it, though. “Mother, not only are we watching televised entertainment rather than earnestly discussing our day over dinner, but the lack of a table means that there are no arbitrary rules of etiquette to enforce! This is sheer anarchy! Also, I dropped a lot of whatever this green goop is on the rug.”