Post Content

Mary Worth, 10/21/13

There’s some important historical context for this Mary’s-friend-is-a-hero-for-the-homeless story: many years ago, Mary had a friend stay with her and she got drunk and destroyed Mary’s precious swans and then she left in shame and ended up at the Charterstone Women’s Shelter, which as far as Mary was concerned was the worst place in the entire universe. How would Mary’s condescending attitude towards such places affect her relationship with someone who is dedicating her life work to homeless services? Fortunately, all has been resolved: Shelly no longer works with actual gross homeless people, but instead fundraises and hobnobs with rich and powerful people like Hillary Clinton. How genteel! This visit is going to be extremely spiritually fulfilling, but also hobo-free.

Slylock Fox, 10/21/13

Ha ha, yes, Rodney is mixing blue and yellow paint to make green … but why? Why is he ritually daubing green paint onto various mailboxes — green paint that he didn’t buy in the store, but that he mixed himself to create the perfect shade? Is he only pretending to be a devil-may-care ne’er-do-well in designer shades and a leather jacket, but secretly he worships the Dark Elder Gods with a fiery intensity, identifying the homes of future sacrificial victims using the Mark described in the Fourth Forbidden Book?

Momma, 10/21/13

This is the saddest Momma I’ve ever seen by an order of magnitude. In a terrible moment of clarity, Francis realizes that it will be years before he gets a scrap of approval from his mother again. “I wish I were dead,” he thinks. “I wish I were dead and stuffed like a bear in a museum case, so I could only feel this and nothing else, forever.”

Hi and Lois, 10/21/13

Lois wants to redo the kitchen and Hi doesn’t think they can afford it and Lois is mad at him about it! I’m … pretty sure this isn’t a “joke” per se?

Gasoline Alley, 10/21/13

Meanwhile, in “Slim is a hateable moron” news, Slim doesn’t understand the concept of foreign languages.

Post Content

Family Circus, 10/20/13

Thel leaves the dishes for her evening pick-me-up down in the laundry room. Bil strains to remember what people mean by words like “hope” and “win.” Candyland was never supposed to be like this … not like this. The animals bide their time.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/20/13

Another sunset-colored Sunday Funky, in which we learn that Winkerbean pere et fils can only interact through the medium of commerce: “I’m here, Dad! How much attention and respect would you like to buy this time?”

Hey, remember when I said the Montoni pizza was the standard transactional unit of misery in Westview? SEE?

Why are Wally and Darrin taking a table out at closing time?

Better Half, 10/20/13 (panel)

Sadly, Harriet, that is definitely a Thing, and there’s a lot of it going around:

Mark Trail, 10/17/13 (panel)

Mary Worth, 10/20/13

So Mary Worth is apparently giving up on those confusing “stories” entirely and cutting straight to the self-congratulation? Unless the story is the self-congratulation, and Shelly’s got a chain-link cage set up in her drawing room so she and Mary can oil up and square off after lunch in a ‘Condescending Vanity’-themed Hell in a Cell? ‘Cause I would totally spring for the Pay-per-View on that.

OK, that’s it for me — look for Josh Sunday afternoon or early Monday with Comments of Slightly More than a Week and lots of good clean family-style comics mockery. Thanks for a fun time, everybody!

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/13/13 (panels)

What is the relationship between art and reality — among the dreamer, the dream, and the dreamed? Magritte gives us one viewpoint, Snuffy Smith another.

Snuffy reveals how the artist not only creates a work but selects its audience, source of his reputation and claims to authenticity. He is his own best example: once a mere usurper in Barney Google’s strip, he now asserts his own membership in the very elites who read his Sunday “throwaway panels” in their expansive flatlander newspapers or on high-falutin’ electronic devices. With a delicate hanky-dab at his nose, he rises — refined and redefined, “Snuffy” no more!

Judge Parker, 10/13/13 (panel)

Boy, this lady sure hates hats, doesn’t she?

Beetle Bailey, 10/13/13

You know, there are plenty of attractive and willing human partners around, like Sarge’s Sgt. Louise Lugg, Beetle’s Miss Buxley, and Killer’s groupies, but it’s all surrogates with these guys: robots, trees, and again with Beetle’s beloved pillow here. I’m just saying that’s kind of messed up.

Mary Worth, 10/13/13 (panel)

We had to wait a long time to see Mary’s head impaled on a fish, but I think we can all agree it was worth it.

Mutts, 10/13/13

Mooch ignores the comics’ prohibition of “FLICK” to imply that Earl has sex with his own parasites.

— Uncle Lumpy