Post Content

Mary Worth, 10/1/16

OH MY GOD (literally): Iris is going to cure Tommy from his pill addiction, through Jesus. Remember when Tommy was in prison, and Iris went to visit him, and he waved a tiny, tiny bible at her? It seemed unlikely to me at the time that Tommy had truly turned to God for forgiveness of his various meth-dealing sins, and while his bible was far too small to hide weed or a shiv in, I assumed he was using it to distract Iris while a confederate picked her pocket or something. But no, apparently he had turned to it for “help,” but once he got deep into the endless laws about diet and ritual purity in Exodus, he “couldn’t keep up with it.” Thanks to his more studious mother carefully marking all of the passages in scripture that deal with opioid abuse, Tommy will soon be on the road to recovery and won’t further burden our tax-funded SAMHSA facilities, unlike some atheist pill fiends we could mention.

Mark Trail, 10/1/16

Meanwhile, our heroes in Mark Trail are about to solve their problems by recourse to a much more ancient deity. This ruined temple to a long-forgotten Polynesian fire god is now infested with ants that are foreign to the island and must be removed. The god can only be awoken with a sacrifice, though. A virgin sacrifice. We now know why Abbey was so keen to get Mark over here.

Post Content

Mary Worth, 9/29/16

I’m not shy about my longtime affection for Joe Giella’s decade-plus at Mary Worth, I’ve been fans of June Brigman and Roy Richardson so far as well. Like Giella, they too come from the superhero world; as a result, despite the big shift in style they’ve brought to the strip, they carry on the tradition of the art feeling a little too jazzy for the banality of life in Charterstone. Anyway, one of my favorite little details of the Giella era was the weird food blobs. The Brigman/Richardson era may have opened with some lovingly detailed sandwiches, but they’re clearly aware of strip traditions, so shoutout to the meal of weird brownish chunks of Chinese food Iris and Tommy are sharing off of a single plate, washed down with chocolate milk.

Spider-Man, 9/29/16

“At last! I, Egghead, have captured Ant-Man — and Spider-Man to boot! And now all I have to do is scoop them up and — what’s this? Blast! I knew this shag carpeting was a terrible mistake! ‘It’ll be so comfy on your bare feet,’ they said! My plans are ruined!”

Blondie, 9/29/16

“Plus, you’re definitely going to be killing people — only this time without any lame-o ‘Geneva Conventions’ to cramp your style!”

Post Content

Shoe, 9/21/16

You know how you can look at something for every day for years and never really notice it, until one day a slight shift in perspective totally blows your mind? Well, I read this dumb joke about how Shoe, the title character of the strip Shoe, spends a lot of time at strip clubs, and I was starting to work myself up to a joke about how the very idea of sexy live nude bird-women really brings to the fore the uncomfortable realities of how the bird-people of Shoe have both avian and mammalian characteristics, when suddenly I realized:

Shoe doesn’t wear clothes.

Every other bird-person in this strip wears clothes! Not Shoe. He wears white low-top sneakers and smokes cigars but otherwise goes around fully nude. And everyone just goes along with this! What … what is going on here. Why is he naked all the time. WHYYYYY

Mary Worth, 9/21/16

I’m kind of surprised that this SAMHSA-approved substance abuse counselor is doing his intake with his newest adult patient with his mother sitting right there in the room with him, or that he seems to be taunting him for his inability to score Vicodin. I’m not that familiar with the treatment modalities for opioid addiction, though. I’m learning just like you all are!

Funky Winkerbean, 9/21/16

Becky’s wordless emotional arc here, as she goes from hope that her husband’s obsessive geekery might actually improve their family’s financial situation for once to mingled anger and crushing despair, is legitimately the best-executed thing on the comics pages today.

Pluggers, 9/21/16

Pluggers haven’t had sex for years, guys. Years.