Post Content

Spider-Man, 2/13/15

So it turns out that Mysterio’s mysterious powers of flight come not from the supernatural, but rather from an array of gadgets! He’s mostly been cruising around on that thing that Spidey is dangling from in panel one, which yesterday he called his “nigh-invisible sky-ski” and which Spider-Man today refers to as “see-through” despite the fact that it’s blatantly the shade of bright yellow that you paint construction equipment with specifically to make it easier to see. He’s got a back-up flying device, too, which is a smart move when your primary flying device is structured such that it would be very easy to just, you know, fall off of it. Anyway, the best thing about today’s strip is clearly panel one, in which Spider-Man taunts Mysterio about what appears to be his awful, imminent death.

Gil Thorp, 2/13/15

Over in Gil Thorp, Max Bacon™ continues his quest for Adderall. Today’s episode tickles me because he’s blatantly leaving whatever the electronic version of a paper trail is in his attempt to illegally acquire performance-enhancing drugs, bringing to mind the end of this classic scene from The Wire.

Apartment 3-G, 2/13/15

This Apartment 3-G plot is supposed to be about Margo getting her mom out of the clutches of some terrible phony psychic, but that’s all unravelling because it turns out that her grift mostly involves soaking Margo’s dad for money to buy fun things with, and what’s the harm in that, really? Game recognizes game.

Momma, 2/13/15

Francis is a notorious ladies man, but his overarching goal is to avoid work at all times, so he’s not shy about using his sweet young body to charm whoever finds him charming.

Post Content

Mark Trail, 2/12/15

Hey, guys, remember back in October when Mark and Cherry got in some weird out-of-context longbow practice? Well, consider today to be context: provided. You could say there’ve been two Chekov’s Bow and Arrow Sets in this storyline: the first one placed on the metaphorical wall when Mark and Cherry did a little target practice back in October, and the second in panel one, when there turned out to be a bow and arrow just neatly propped up on this boat’s deck for no reason anyone has bothered or will bother to explain.

Momma, 2/12/15

How long has Abe Lincoln’s reanimated corpse been shambling among the living? At least since 1928, which was the last time he was able to pour liquid down his rotting gullet. Since then, anyone encountering this terrifying presidential zombie has presumably fled from him, screaming, in those few times when he stumbled into the light. Only Francis and his mother are caring — or foolish — enough to offer this unnatural history-golem their hospitality.

Crankshaft, 2/12/15

I’ve spent the maximum amount of time my own sense of dignity allows me to spend trying to parse a joke out of this Crankshaft and have concluded that … there really isn’t one? That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it, though. If you don’t like seeing a slouching, sad-faced Ed Crankshaft admitting to his daughter that he’s slowly dying, you and I are very different people.

Marvin, 2/12/15

I know what the joke in this strip is, though! I guessed it right away! The joke is that Marvin smells like feces, all the time, and everybody knows it.

Post Content

Curtis, 2/4/15

This week’s Curtis has features Curtis’s dad going on and on about this collection of music “I grew up with” as performed by extremely non-specific “legendary” artists, who, we learn today, are not rappers. One assumes that these legendary artists are never named so that this plotline can be trotted out every few years while keeping Greg the same age, but the whole thing already seems on the edge of believability: with a couple of pre-teen kids and a wife not notably younger than him, it seems unrealistic to have Greg be much older than his mid-40s, which would mean he hit his musical stride right as hip-hop was starting to enter the musical mainstream. Ten years from now, it will be actively strange if he grew up not listening to rap, although who knows, maybe it’ll be just as strange if Curtis is listening to it.

Pluggers, 2/4/15

See, Curtis? Even Pluggers is admitting that most people in the plugger demographic in 2015 were filthy hippies in their youth. Just admit that Curtis’s dad likes old-school rap already.

Judge Parker, 2/4/15

Any chance that this angry fellow, who claimed earlier to have some pull with important politicians, might actually have pull with important politicians has just gone out the window as he used “the fed” to refer to some random non-Federal Reserve government agency. Sam, whose returns on capital vary between the staggering and the completely flabbergasting based on Fed decisions on interest rates and quantitative easing and such, is very much not impressed. It would be fun if this guy really were talking about the actual Fed, though. “We need the Fed working on this! Do you think fiat money can clear that road? Only a strong gold-based currency can restore our nation’s highways!”

Crankshaft, 2/4/15

In today’s fractured media landscape, there are still specialized audiences who aren’t being catered to — fans of watching angry, unsympathetic old men being sexually humiliated in public, for instance. One bold comic strip aims to meet this need.

Momma, 2/4/15

For a brief moment, Francis catches a glimpse of what it might be like to feel real human joy — and sees just enough to know that the experience is completely beyond him.