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Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/12/22

Whoops, I was going to do a whole bit about how this bulldog straight-up murdered someone in prison “the kennel,” but it turns out that teardrop tattoos are polysemous, with as many meanings as there are people who get them. So instead I’ll just say that I really admire the 3D, photorealistic work on this one, much better than you usually see in from tattoos people get while incarcerated, and even more impressive when you realize that the artist probably didn’t have thumbs.

Six Chix, 10/12/22

Look, if you had told me when I first launched this blog that I would be spending a lot of time contemplating the romantic and reproductive lives of mermaids, I might’ve taken a different path in life, but I’m here now and have to make the best of it. Anyway, we now know that, in the early stage of their lifecycle, mer-people have a fish upper half and mammalian lower half, which is really quite a fascinating discovery! Also, as with fish, it seems that the sperm and egg meet and fertilize outside the body, meaning that the young must be retrieved and delivered to the mother by a stork (a species that coexists with mermaids in some kind of symbiotic relationship) in order to be properly raised. (On the other hand, it’s possible that this baby is a reversed generic abomination that the mother tried unsuccessfully to toss into the sea, and this stork is just confronting her with her responsibilities.)

Pluggers, 10/12/22

Ha ha! It’s funny because pluggers are in pain, all the time!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/4/22

This strip has honestly sent me into a tailspin trying to figure out what the relationship is supposed to be between actually existing Appalachia and the faux-hillbilly cultural biome of Snuffy Smith. The fact that Snuffy is obviously envious of the level of infrastructural development in West Virginia ought to make that state’s inhabitants feel something approaching pride, or maybe relief. It’s also sad to see that Hootin’ Holler does not share real-world Appalachia’s rich heritage of songcraft, because these lyrics do not scan at all.

Slylock Fox, 4/4/22

The operation of law enforcement and the court system in the Forest Kingdom, and where Slylock stands in relationship to either, is always something of a mystery to me, but today’s strip seems to imply that Sly can just drag anyone into court on a whim, and will there serve simultaneously as prosecutor and sole witness. I sincerely hope that he spotted Slick Smitty’s little trick and then immediately arrested him, and that his date is still sitting at the restaurant waiting for the check while this sham of a trial rushes towards its pre-ordained conclusion.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 4/4/22

Absolutely loving the spit-take in the final panel here. This woman is shocked, shocked to learn that women can have jobs now! What’s next, voting?

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/8/22

Do you think the various bird-women with glasses that Mother Goose talks to in Mother Goose and Grimm are all supposed to be the same character, or do subtle differences in hair color and beak shape indicate that they’re a mostly interchangeable but still distinct series of interlocutors? I ask because if this strip is taking place less than a week after the one where Mother Goose wistfully said she wished her boyfriend shared her desire for a big church wedding, it would be quite poignant, but if she’s talking to same woman her boyfriend wants to have sex with, it just got a lot darker.

Mary Worth, 2/8/22

Just like Mary Worth, the character, tries to browbeat all her friends into tolerating Wilbur despite the fact that he’s obviously a monster, Mary Worth, the comic strip, is trying to get us to accept his continued existence by showing that his assholery can serve as a prompt for exciting new non-Wilbur storylines. It’s honestly working on me a little, as today’s second panel absolutely perfectly captures Toby just as her carefully buttressed emotional superstructure shatters into a million pieces, hopefully presaging a truly hilarious downward spiral in the weeks to come.

Dennis the Menace, 2/8/22

The only way I can understand Dennis the Menace doing a “Dennis teaches Joey that it’s OK for a man to cry when he’s sad” panel is by assuming that King Features has an entire lab dedicated to making the least menacing Dennis the Menace panel possible under the laws of physics as we understand them.

Pluggers, 2/8/22

You know, a lot of people think I’m a little too hard on the plugger demographic on this blog, but even I couldn’t come up with anything as mean as the plugger-identified reader who contemplated the characteristics that make up the plugger identity and then submit an entry that boils down to “pluggers sure take a long time to shit!”