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Hey guys, a couple reminders/updates for you re: the new site design:

That’s it for now! Enjoy, and email me with bug reports which we’ll hop on, and feature requests which we’ll consider!

Mary Worth, 1/12/17

It’s sad to me that Iris was so mortified by her inappropriate dress for that concert that Zak had to spend all his time consoling her and complimenting her outfit rather than really cutting loose and dancing to the stylings of “Maggio Nollaig” (a name that I haven’t mentioned here before but I swear to God I didn’t make up). Or maybe he means “dance” in a more specialized way. Like, maybe he means “flail about the severed arm of my enemy, which is definitely what you’re seeing at the bottom of panel two, since there’s no way that hand is connected to my body.”

Dennis the Menace, 1/12/17

It’s time to ask ourselves: who’s the real menace in the idyllic suburban neighborhood where the Mitchells and Wilsons live? Is it the innocent young boy who means well but who, like many his age, doesn’t have much of a filter or an understanding of social niceties? Or is George “Single Bead Of Rage-Sweat” Wilson, a bitter old man perpetually on the verge of an explosion, willing to take out his bottomless supply of rage on his wife, the neighbors, or even hapless robots who make the mistake of calling his home?

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Curtis, 1/10/17

Oh, look, it’s our favorite team of bullies, Derrick and “Onion”! Wait, what? When did “Onion” lose his quote marks? Did he finally get his name legally changed to Onion? Has that reaffirmed his sense of self-worth and caused a corresponding slip in his bullying game, resulting in the team’s extremely half-assed transition from “did you have a good weekend” to “your mom is fat and has a nickname like a noise a cow makes, even though you would never actually call a cow that?” These guys might as well turn to cyber-bullying because their IRL bullying is not worth the effort anymore!

Funky Winkerbean, 1/10/17

There’s no way around this: I’m about to combine two different kinds of terrible people you can be, namely “Oooh, I’ve lived in a glamorous city for a couple years and now I’m a big expert” and “Oooh, I’ve spotted a continuity error in a comic strip,” but: there haven’t been any Brown Derby Restaurants open in LA in years, guys. The last surviving example of the distinctive domed building has long been incorporated into a Koreatown strip mall; some other company long ago bought the rights to the brand name and operates several Brown Derbies in Northeastern Ohio (NATCH), but those locations are just in generic suburban structures, so that’s not where they are either. Because I choose not to view this as an outright error, though, I’m going to suggest that Cliff and his girlfriend have finally gone fully senile, and that this is their romantic delusion as they actually stumble into a grubby KFC somewhere in East Hollywood.

Mark Trail, 1/10/17

Damn it Mark, Woods & Wildlife Magazine is the only serious publication left dedicated to longform reporting on environmental issues, now that Rupert Murdoch owns National Geographic! I will not have you shifting its editorial focus to all those times you almost got blown up, just to grab fleeting web traffic!

Marvin, 1/10/17

I guess today’s Marvin punchline is a play on words about this? I hate to say this, but maybe the strip should stick to poop jokes.

Mary Worth, 1/10/17

Reminder: Even in a Mary Worth plot that’s about a hot sex affair between an older woman and a hip young person, the way that hip young person is going to talk about sex will be more awkward than you can possibly imagine.

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(Hey! What’s with the new site design? What’s this business in the top menu about “membership?” Get all the info here!)

Hagar the Horrible, 1/9/17

The period in Western European history between the fifth and tenth century are often called the “Dark Ages,” though contemporary historians tend to push back on this. It’s true that social organization changed radically, in many ways for the more chaotic and violent, after the fall of Rome, and much of philosophy was lost to the Latin world; but technology continued advancing, with the stirrup and the horse collar only appearing in this period. Still, advanced concrete really was one of those things that people forgot how to make, vanishing from the West in the 5th century and not reappearing until the 14th, which makes this strip anachronistic. Maybe the newfangled poured stone was a (re)invention by this particular craftsman, who found himself promptly murdered by the local viking chieftain for annoying him, leaving Europe concreteless for hundreds of years to come.

This strip is also a great example of how character design can really screw with a visual gag. Lucky Eddy always wears a long robe (cloak?) that goes down to his ankles; logically it should have dragged through the wet cement, but instead it looks like he’s hopping and making cloak-sized holes.

Dennis the Menace, 1/9/17

In our previous discussion of “just what religion are the Mitchells, anyway?”, we settled on high church Episcopalian, probably, and I dunno, maybe this is a cultural stereotype, but I don’t think the Episcopalians are gonna be that upset by the idea of Heaven as having an eternal open bar.

Mary Worth, 1/9/17

Does Mary Worth understand sarcasm? Does she know that “Good luck with that!” is usually sarcastic? I can never tell with her. Anyway, I too wish Iris a non-sarcastic good luck! Good luck not thinking about Wilbur at all! It’s easy if you try!