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The Lockhorns, 11/3/15

INT. – UNDERGROUND HACKER HQ – NIGHT

Dozens of malicious HACKERS sit around a conference table in a murkily lit room. All have laptops in front of them; banks of computer servers with blinking lights line the walls.

HACKER #1
Gentlemen, I’ve summoned you here today to present you with … some disturbing content.

HACKER #2
Please. We’re the kings of the dark web. We’ve seen and heard things that would send normal people’s minds spinning into insanity.

HACKER #1
That may be, but this is horror of a different kind. I want you to turn your attention to today’s Lockhorns.

HACKER #3
You mean the comic? From the newspaper? I didn’t know they were still making those.

HACKER #1
Please point your browsers to the “Comics Kingdom” website, where you’ll be able to find the most recent panel.

HACKER #2
But it’s a paywalled site! How can we see it without paying?

All the HACKERS laugh uproariously as they effortlessly HACK the site with a few keystrokes. Their laughter ends abruptly as they see today’s Lockhorns panel.

HACKER #2
My god.

HACKER #3
They made a “dark web” joke.

HACKER #4
In a newspaper comic strip.

HACKER #2
Does this mean…

HACKER #1
Yes. Hacking is over. Being a hacker, knowing about the dark web … it’s not cool anymore. None of it.

The hackers close their laptops and begin smashing them to bits with HAMMERS.

HACKER #3
So, anyone else have any life skills?

HACKER #2
I waited tables for a while.

HACKER #4
I can do some bookeepping.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith and The Family Circus, 11/3/15

Here in the United States it’s Odd-Numbered Election Year, which is important to voters in a few states (enjoy, Louisiana!) but mostly pretty low-key. That hasn’t stopped a couple of longstanding legacy comic strips from getting political, though — specifically, from expressing outright contempt for the whole concept of electoral democracy. How did the dinosaurs come to rule the earth? Through some fair election process? Don’t be a chump. They seized control of the planet with their teeth and claws. Maybe the piddling political issues of the day can be resolved by voting, but when it comes to basic questions of species dominance, we still live in the constant war of all against all. Snuffy’s neighbors might feel smug about performing their so-called “civic duty”; but Snuffy knows he’s doing the real important work, which is preventing our planet from being overrun by fish-men.

Mary Worth and The Phantom, 11/3/15

oh

HAPPENING

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Slylock Fox, 11/2/15

I don’t think we always appreciate how difficult it must be for a human in the post-animapocalypse world of Slylock Fox. Sure, we make fun of Count Weirdly and his bizarrely theatrical lifestyle, or Slick Smitty and his banal little grifts, but the truth is that they’re probably among those humans who have adapted most successfully to the new regime. If you want to know how life is for the average remaining specimen of H. sapiens, check out Weirdly’s unfortunate “assistant”: the tattered clothes, the unkempt beard, the wide, staring eyes that have seen some things. Presumably he got wind of a fellow human who didn’t live out in the woods in fear like, well, like an animal, pounded on the door of Weirdly’s castle hoping to be taken in and nurtured. Instead, he’s being put on display for the amusement of the animal media. Weirdly didn’t even give him a change of clothes, and once that smug fox reveals the scam, presumably Weirdly will blame him and cast him out again, leaving him to fend for himself. Sorry, friend, but if there was some kind of loyalty among humans, the world wouldn’t be the way it is now.

Momma, 11/2/15

I have no idea who this woman is that Francis is hanging out with, but I’m assuming that he and she were smoking a lot of weed before Momma came over and they’re real paranoid she’s going to be able to smell it.

Mary Worth, 11/2/15

MARY WORTH IS TELLING A NEW YORK CABBIE NOT TO TEXT WHILE DRIVING, REPEAT, MARY WORTH IS TELLING A NEW YORK CABBIE NOT TO TEXT WHILE DRIVING, DANGEROUS HILARITY LEVELS AHEAD

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Mary Worth, 11/1/15

As Apartment 3-G’s impending shutdown has shown, it’s a tough market out there for soap opera comic strips. Losers fade; winners adapt. That’s why Mary Worth is, right before our eyes, pivoting into the kind of action-oriented comic today’s readers crave. Olive is a young girl with supernatural powers. Today’s she’s only demonstrating prescience, but soon she might be able to move objects with her mind … or even kill. That’s why she needs Mary at her side to guide her to adulthood and keep her moral code intact. It will be a dangerous journey. It could go either way. But in Mary Worth, we’ll see Olive become a tremendous force of good, on the comics page — and, if we play our cards right, in a Netflix original TV series in the spring of 2017!

Crock, 11/1/15

The other day I was on the bus, and there were these two guys, one probably in his late 50s, the other in his 20s, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t know each other but were chatting in that way people on long bus rides sometimes do. I sat down near them in the middle of the conversation, so I’m not entirely clear on the context, but the younger guy was describing how his cousin (presumably around the same age) had committed suicide, and the older guy said, “Yeah, the Millennials are all weak-minded, I grew up in the ’70s when we were tough,” and I was completely flabbergasted. Anyway, it’s pretty common sport for anyone over 35 to shit on Millennials these days, and one of the great things about having comics like Crock written and drawn by very, very old people is to remind us that every generation was once young and irritating and viewed by its elders as worthy of unique and particular contempt. Don’t worry, kids, you’ll be old soon enough, and then everyone will forget all the selfie jokes.