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Mary Worth, 5/27/21

We all frankly know that the intertwined personal and (aspirationally, on both parts) professional relationship between Drew and Ashlee is going to hilariously unravel into unhinged acrimony at some point. The delicious narrative tension arises from the question of how, exactly, this will go down. Personally, based on panel one here, in which Ashlee’s limbs are splayed in random directions and her mouth twisted into a rictus grin, my bet is that Drew is going to post a bunch of these pictures to his Instagram and they will be terrible, just laughably bad, thoroughly humiliating Ashlee online and producing a ragestorm that will make her public meltdown from a few weeks ago seem like a calm and rational conversation about a misunderstood scheduling conflict.

Anyway, this panel has delighted me like few others in recent memory, and while I’m not sure I have the energy to run a formal contest, per se, along the lines of the ones I did for self-clubbing Tyler in Gil Thorp and Rex and June’s funeral facial contortions, I certainly wouldn’t object if anyone were to attempt to reproduce Ashlee’s pose/outfit/whole vibe here, photograph themselves in the process, and email the results to me at bio@jfruh.com, and I would definitely post any photos I received on this very blog!

Beetle Bailey, 5/27/21

Hey, guess what year the sale of leaded gasoline for personal vehicle use was fully phased out in the United States? 1996! Guess what the average age of a private in the U.S. Army is? Less than 20! If you think those two numbers seem at odds, maybe contemplate what the average age of a Beetle Bailey reader is instead.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/27/21

I am a squeamish indoor kid who does not like bugs, so I am experiencing zero regrets about the fact that I no longer live in Baltimore, which is currently ankle deep in screaming cicadas, according to all my friends there. Anyway, each of those cicadas now befouling lawns across the Mid-Atlantic was laid as an egg 17 years ago, it’s fun to think of them as “teens” to whom you would not loan your car, just like regular teens! That’s because every single neuron in their tiny brains is focused on fucking and then dying, just like regular teens.

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/20/21

I’ve mocked them over the years, but I have come to respect the humble comics colorists as a vital part of the operation on the funny pages, and indeed believe sometimes they put more thought into their jobs than the cartoonists do. Take today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, for instance. The title character is, by long established convention, a bird, so her nose/mouth area gets a beak coloring, and her friend/drinking companion, despite her long hair, has a generally bird-like look, so she gets the same treatment. But what about the dude? In the suit? Is he a bird? He has a big pointy nose but he also has a big bulbous chin butt, rather than a chin drawn to resemble basically the bottom half a beak, like the ladies? But Ma Goose’s friend definitely wants to marry and/or fuck this guy, possibly not in that order, so it would be unseemly if he weren’t a bird, right? Better give his whole … nose/mouth … beak-ish … area the established beak aesthetic. Just to be safe!

Family Circus, 5/20/21

Another institution I’ve come to respect more and more over the years is the Family Circus. Say what you will about its treacly aura or its grandma-fridge fanbase, but it does commit to the consistency of its characters no matter where that leads. What I mean to say is that Billy is absolutely the kind of kid who would learn about the distinction between who and whom at school and then try to use his new knowledge to make his mom feel dumb, unsuccessfully.

Dennis the Menace, 5/20/21

A lot of people think Mr. Wilson is grumpy because Dennis is always over at his house annoying him, but there’s more to it than that. For instance, he also resents his wife of many years and thinks his marital life is a prison!

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Crankshaft, 5/9/21

“He says that right before someone burns down a building for the insurance money. Happens more often than you’d think! Anyway, that disinfectant is flammable, right?”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/9/21

YES

FINALLY

GRIMM IS GOING DOWN FOR HIS CRIMES

Panels from Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/9/21

STOP TRYING TO TRICK US INTO THINKING ANYONE WOULD BE EXCITED ABOUT TALKING TO BUCK, REX MORGAN, M.D.

ABSOLUTELY NOBODY WANTS TO TALK TO BUCK