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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/2/17

Usually Snuffy’s brushes with the law are depicted with the same jocular gloss as the rest of Hootin’ Holler’s dysfunctional culture. The crimes are generally relatively low-impact stuff like bootlegging and chicken thievery, and Snuffy goes to jail for a few days and there’s tongue-lolling hilarity all around. Today … today is different. The Holler’s judge, the only real representative of outside authority in this lawless community, looks genuinely horrified by the case he’s just finished presiding over: has his previous indulgent attitude led to this? Even Snuffy and Loweezy look like they’re suffering true shame. My assumption is that the generations-old Smif-Barlow fued finally escalated to the point where Sheriff Tate stumbled upon a ramshackle cabin on the creek where Barlow corpses were stacked like cordwood.

Spider-Man, 9/2/17

Wait, Kala and Mole-Man were engaged? You know, for a gnomish, homely, nearly blind cave-dweller, he still gets his fair share of attention from the ladies! This makes Kala’s insistence that her husband not disrupt the Mole-Man/Aunt May wedding all the more poignant. Why can’t everyone in this strip be as emotionally advanced as her?

Pluggers, 9/2/17

It’s no “Rhino-Man hocks his TV,” but “pluggers feel overpowering shame over something that’s entirely harmless and increasingly socially normalized” is pretty high up there in the pantheon of Extremely Grim Pluggers Punchlines, in my opinion.

Judge Parker, 9/2/17

“To the CIA! Once we turn in your wife, we can stop worrying about this — and, here’s the best part, probably get a big reward!”

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Mary Worth, 8/8/17

Shoutout to Mary Worth for starting a storyline where I honestly have no idea where they’re going with it! Like, are we supposed to see poor klutzy Jared, who can’t even manage to properly match his scrubs, as a more decent and down-to-earth romantic partner than moody, handsome Dr. Ned? Or is a humiliated Jared going to go home and leave a 3,000-word screed on the r/incel subreddit about how he’s been thwarted by chads for the last time, then head into the hospital to kill everybody there? (If none of the words in that last sentence made any sense to you, check out this glossary, which I’m sorry for introducing you to.)

Hi and Lois, 8/8/17

I’m on the record as embracing Hi and Lois’s Thirsty’s return to form as an unpleasant drunk, and I’m eager to see just how far down that path the strip is willing to go! “My life’s already a mess!” a disheveled Thirsty, his nose already glowing with booze at 5:30 pm, bellows to his only friend as he spends his entire paycheck on scratch-offs.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/8/17

We already have one elderly refugee here on the Island Of Misfit Ancillary Starbuck Jones Creative Toilers, and its Cliff Anger, whose career ended when as an idealistic young lefty he didn’t pivot quickly enough to follow America’s changing attitudes towards the USSR after World War II. Phil Holt, though? He’s not Phil Holt of Batom Comics anymore, and if you look into his eyes in the final panel, you know that the reason is definitely murder.

Pluggers, 8/8/17

Wait, do pluggers think that you have to live in a different city and not interact with someone in person to be a friend? Is that what people are telling them? That’s unbelievably sad.

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Mark Trail, 7/28/17

So it turns out those weird-haired paper pushers back at the Rapid City office aren’t weilling to go out into the field and get their hands dirty in the hunt for the Bank Robber Band One Of Whom Is A Lady. Nope, that job has fallen to … badass local sheriff Don Stober! Don’s going to brave rain and tornadoes to find out that Mark has already punched out all the bad buys, probably. Anyway, let’s all admire his mustache and elegantly tapered sideburns, which are cut short enough that no inclement weather can muss them.

Pluggers, 7/28/17

I’ve long tried to explain that being a plugger is actually a complex identity formed by a series of interrelated cultural, class, and political markers, and isn’t just a synonym for being old. However, today’s panel seems to fatally undermine my argument! Actually, the caption implies that being a plugger means not just being old, but being capable of remembering not being old and comparing it your current state of oldness, which frankly is a lot more capacity for self-reflection and abstract thought than I’ve ever credited to pluggers.