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Spider-Man, 4/23/18

Welp, as of last week almost all of the dramas in the current Spider-Man plot had been resolved — Dr. Connors is no longer the Lizard, Bruce Banner can once again turn into the Hulk, and we’re all just going to agree to not talk about whatever the implications of that whole blood transfusion swap business were. All that’s left is Jameson’s threat to out Connors as the Lizard, even though we just established that he wasn’t the Lizard any more. Spider-Man came up with an actually effective, if extremely brutal, solution to this problem, which was to leave Jameson in the swamp to die, but now that the cowardly publisher has promised on fear of his life not to do the bad thing he was threatening to do, I guess they’re going to let him live. Definitely he’s completely dependable on this point and will honor a pledge extracted from him under duress! All that’s left for us to learn is whether Spidey’s extremely efficient “carry the other two guys out of the swamp tucked under your arms” transportation method can scale up to three guys.

Pluggers, 4/23/18

Pluggers are just completely insufferable. Straight-up narcissists. When you have a conversation with a plugger, is he really listening to you? Does he care about you, as a person? He most definitely does not.

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Dennis the Menace, 4/22/18

Acting as if minor changes in consumer behavior can solve major structural societal problems? Pretty darn menacing, if you ask me.

Pluggers, 4/22/18

THEORY: The pluggers most like to care about the welfare of animals … are the ones who are beginning to suspect that they themselves are animals.

Slylock Fox, 4/22/18

“None of those ingredients are real! Plus, eternal existence would eventually become a curse! Without the rise and fall of generations, society would be sapped of its vitality! Without death, there can’t be any true life! Please listen, you’ve got to believe me!”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/20/18

I was struck by the first panel of today’s Snuffy Smith, as the strip generally doesn’t do much by way of experimenting with form but today gives us a different perspective of our diminutive title character, just barely visible from the judge’s bench. Perhaps it’s meant to be symbolic of today’s installment’s narrative: normally we see things from the viewpoint of Snuffy Smith, to the extent that we find his layabout criminal attitudes normal and even charming. But the mention of Farmer Clem reminds us that there are in fact honest citizens trying to extract sustenance from Hootin’ Holler’s meager soil, their lives made all the harder by Snuffy’s thievery. And then there are the chickens. My god, think of the horrors the chickens have to suffer! (I’m talking about being killed and eaten, of course. You thought I was talking about weird sex stuff, didn’t you? What, being killed and eaten isn’t bad enough?)

Hi and Lois, 4/20/18

This is an intensely weird setup to this joke, right? The definite vibe I’m getting here is that the “new friend” is going to follow the trail of detritus to Chip’s lair, where he will have to defeat him in combat and either win glory or be devoured.

Gil Thorp, 4/20/18

This seems like an adequate penance for Marty, but I see a big loophole: he’s going to take that ad time he’s forced to buy during the girls’ game and fill it with his own stream-of-consciousness take on what he got from reading the “Latin America: A Land Of Contrasts” ebook while drunk.

Mary Worth, 4/20/18

Oh, I guess Wilbur is only getting dumped from his local paper, so his livelihood won’t be destroyed; it’s just that his ex won’t be reminded of what she gave up every time she opens the Santa Royale News-Intelligencer to the op-ed pages, which, I assume, she probably doesn’t do very often, because print media, am I right? I know we did a whole storyline about how Iris is unusually old to be dating Zak, but come on, she’s not that old. Anyway, I certainly hope that, just as Santa Royale is a thinly veiled stand-in Santa Barbara, the Santa Royale Democrat and Telegraph is similarly modelled on the Santa Barbara News-Press, because that paper’s story is nuts. It’s probably the only small-city daily in America to merit not just a Wikipedia article but an entirely separate Wikipedia “controversy” article, and the idea of Wilbur stomping down there to whine about his columns while the staff is in the midst of labor agitation, ideological purges, and child porn investigations is delicious.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/20/18

“I thought I was going to be paired up with some young guys, some new blood,” Flash Freeman thinks mournfully to himself. “That Wayne and Garth shit is more than 25 years old at this point. This is going to be a disaster.”

Pluggers, 4/20/18

I think I’ve spotted your problem there, sir: your GPS is designed to navigate you from place to place via America’s road system and not, say, across an open field or wherever the hell it is you are.