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Mother Goose and Grimm, 4/18/19

It’s kind of funny how America’s stereotypes of “Brooklyn” (which at one point had official signs at the entrance to the borough that said “FUHGEDDABOUTIT” on them) and New Jersey kind of blend together. This speaks, it seems to me, both to the ongoing story of immigrant life in America, in which communities plant in the city and then slowly move to the suburbs over a few generations as longtime residence brings acculturation and wealth, and just to most people in “Real America”‘s inability to distinguish between the diverse parts of the greater New York Area. Anyway, this has just been a set of musings trigged by today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, a nationally syndicated newspaper comic in which a fly and a rat go head to head for the right to feast on a pigeon’s corpse.

Marvin, 4/18/19

The best part of this strip, to me, is when Marvin locks eyes with us and smiles slyly in the final panel, implicating us all in this gross, petty little exchange. “See, it’s not just me,” he’s saying, “my whole family is real dicks all the way down. Yours too, probably!”

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 4/4/19

This won’t be the first time I’ve dwelled on this, but I do think it’s funny how certain objects have just sort of become an archetype for “things that dogs pee on,” like fire hydrants or trees. Dogs will, for the record, pee pretty much anywhere, but they do like a vertical thing where other dogs can sniff, I guess, so trees are more likely that not what you’re likely to see your dog peeing on when you take them for a walk. My point is that today’s Mother Goose and Grimm only works because we have an iconographic context for it: we get that the joke is that “dogs pee on trees, the air freshener looks like a tree, it’s funny because Grimm has mistaken this symbol for the physical object it emulates.” But imagine someone who for whatever cultural reasons wouldn’t be able to make those connections! To them, this is just a comic panel about a dog threatening to piss all over the inside of a car, while his owner begs him not to.

Crankshaft, 4/4/19

In yesterday’s Crankshaft, Crankshaft asked the stewardess for a Coke and she asked if Pepsi were OK and he said “No” and that was the whole strip! Today he just keeps hitting the “call attendant” light and irritating the stewardess for no reason. I know that usually “Crankshaft is an asshole” is the subtext to every Crankshaft punchline, but I guess they’ve decided to make it the text this week? And it’s only Thursday, so buckle up!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/4/19

Sure, Rex was in a plane that almost crashed, but the irritating person he encountered in the process got arrested and slagged on by his own twin brother, and also Rex was showered with praise and free stuff for doing really the bare minimum of keeping an eye on a kid who quite frankly wasn’t showing any inclination to wander off or anything. Honestly the only substantive inconvenience he encountered through this whole ordeal was that he had to leave his bag behind on the plane, and, well, good news, everybody!

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Blondie, 12/12/18

I believe that Dagwood is a true food fetishist, in the sense that he doesn’t just enjoy the act of consuming food in and of itself, but has so centered it in his personality that he’s developed various paraphilias around it. So yeah, he’s gonna want some elaborate role play with his Christmastime pizza delivery, but here’s the thing: sex workers generally charge more as their clients’ tastes get more exotic, and this scenario is no different. You want someone to come down your chimney with pizza (not a euphemism, this is literally what Dagwood wants, this is what he’s been thinking about all day, ever since he spotted the pizza delivery guy in his Santa suit last night and wrote down the number on his car), you’ve gotta pay come-down-your-chimney-with-pizza money.

Crankshaft, 12/12/18

Speaking of people who won’t be coming down your chimney, the “joke” of the current Crankshaft arc is that Crankshaft was running late and didn’t have time to change out of the costume from his mall Santa gig before arriving at his bowling night, which, fine, but … the beard? Surely he could just take off the beard? I was thinking maybe he had affixed it to his face with spirit gum but that seems like far more commitment than Crankshaft has ever put into anything that wasn’t spiting his fellow man.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/12/18

Now, I’m not an artist or a scientist but I was kind of curious about what was going on from an anatomical perspective in that stall and this is what I came up with:

So you heard it here first, kids: pencils shit standing up!

Funky Winkerbean, 12/12/18

Ahhh, I love Holly’s mom’s expression of slowly dawning disappointment! That’s the face of a woman who just minutes ago thought, incorrectly, that she was about to get laid.

Pluggers, 12/12/18

You’re a plugger if there’s absolutely no way you’ll be able to complete your list of menial tasks before you drop dead.