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Mary Worth, 3/17/17

Look, I understand that in these troubled time for publishing, media properties have to do all they can to come up with new and creative sources of revenue. I just don’t think it’s appropriate to let the cruise industry buy long stretches of enthusiastic dialogue in Mary Worth like this. This only thing missing here is Dawn or Tommy or some other condo resident wandering by and saying “Hey, I couldn’t help but overhear that you were talking about taking a cruise! Did you know that the threats from norovirus and Legionnaire’s Disease to passengers are vastly overhyped as part of the liberal media’s anti-cruise-industry agenda?”

Mary and Tobey should should be extolling the dining possibilities aboard top-of-the-line cruise ships. Sure, the buffets might leave a little to be desired, but they’re leaps and bounds ahead of the nutrient-rich but bland “Charterstone Chow” pellets they’re eating for lunch today.

Crankshaft, 3/17/17

Remember, Crankshaft is supposed to be the “fun” Funkyverse strip, which means its punchlines are meant to be broader and less grounded in reality. Unfortunately (or maybe extremely fortunately), the art style is still infected by omnipresent Funkyverse gloom-realism, which means that this week’s strips, about how silly it would be if a beekeeper gave rum balls to bees and they got a li’l tipsy, have now climaxed with Crankshaft looking genuinely terrified that he’s about to be hauled off to jail.

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Slylock Fox, 3/15/17

Wow, some hard truths about animals being laid down here, including the hard truth that owls … are actually kind of dumb? I bet the post-animalpocalypse regime will come to feel bad staffing its entire legal system with owls, then. Just another human superstition they should’ve rejected! Also, it mysteriously seems that the very smart crows never appear in Slylock Fox, at least not in any of the strips in my archive. We can only assume that the Event that granted all the animals sapience made the crows super-intelligent, and they all built spaceships and went to a different, better planet, or maybe transcended their physical bodies and became creatures of pure mind.

Shoe, 3/15/17

Ha ha, yes, it’s funny because Loon’s butt froze, but I have to question what prompted the question in the first place. The Perfesser is just reading the financial section of the newspaper, and thinks, “Huh, you know who seems like a criminal who probably had a warrant taken out against him to ensure that he couldn’t use any of his ill-gotten resources to continue his illegal activities? My friend and co-worker over here!”

Mary Worth, 3/15/17

Dr. Jeff has been taking some time off from his busy schedule of going to the Bum Boat with Mary and trying and failing to get her to marry him to nurse his bad knee at his daughter and son-in-law’s house, so surely he’ll understand when Mary decides to take time off from going to the Bum Boat with Dr. Jeff and rejecting his marriage proposals to go on a fun, sexy cruise with Tobey! And screw the column! Nobody gives a shit about the column! Let nothing stand in the way of this glorious plotline!

Blondie, 3/15/17

Neither Alexander nor Cookie know what “flash in the pan” means. Sad!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/15/17

[long, increasingly awkward silence]

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Mary Worth, 3/13/17

Tobey and Mary are enjoying drinks with fruit slices poolside, so technically I’ll consider this a pool party of the sort we expect and deserve when Mary Worth transitions from one plot to another, and anyway I’m in the mood to be forgiving because OH EM GEE MARY AND TOBEY TROPICAL GAL’S GETAWAY MONTH YES YES YES YESSSSSSS! What excitement awaits us at whatever branded resort on a more-or-less coup-free Caribbean island Tobey’s fancy has settled on? Will Mary get her groove back? Will Mary have to forcibly restrain Tobey from getting her groove back? Will Tobey then be allowed to get her groove back when someone points out that college professors don’t as a rule go on month-long “teaching summits,” certainly not in the middle of the semester? It’s going to be amazing!

This is the first good look we’ve gotten at Tobey under the new artistic regime, other than our brief glimpse of the Camerons’ weird, poorly lit Christmas. While I’ve generally been a fan of the new-look character design, I’m not sure I’m into this one? Other than the hair, she seems possibly based on Emma Stone:

She’s a little too lively looking for my taste, to be honest. The eyes of the Tobey I know and love manage to both project a certain anxious vapidity and seem always haunted by the realization that Tobey’s spending her best years married to Ian Cameron, and those best years are about to run out.

The Phantom, 3/13/17

Over in The Phantom, Lee Falk is busy pounding out an exciting new adventure on his old manual typewriter. A new adventure where the Phantom is going to die! …in a prophecy? Is it just going to be a lot of sitting around the Bandar village and Old Man Mozz telling an elaborate and possibly gruesome story about the Phantom’s death and him thinking “Jeez, what’s the social protocol here, like am I supposed to be freaked out or stoic or what?”

Funky Winkerbean, 3/13/17

Speaking of prophecies of death, looks like Funky’s being drawn by some unnamable force to walk up to the the creepy old house on the top of this overgrown hill on the outskirts of town! I sure hope he doesn’t plunge into a world of hellish horror beyond imagination and is subsequently never heard from again!