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Gasoline Alley, 12/6/16

As is my wont with Gasoline Alley, I have no desire to bring you up to speed on the current storyline about beardy PA Chipper Wallet, and fortunately have no need to either, since nothing happening in today’s strip had any kind of earlier setup. I’m guessing that the strip was tied by some mysterious web of obligation to mention Reg Carter of the PA History Society — like perhaps the PAHS deposited a tidy sum into a certain Swiss bank account controlled by an intermediary shell corporation owned by Gasoline Alley intellectual property holder Tribune Media, or maybe Mr. Carter lost a bet. Anyway, obviously what this transaction needs to make it interesting is a little sex appeal, and what better way to deliver that than to have Chipper’s redheaded assistant practically throwing herself at him? Look at her fluttering her eyelids in panel one. That’s the stuff that gets red-blooded comics readers hot under the collar, I tell you what. The PA History Society’s really getting its money’s worth.

Mark Trail, 12/6/16

If there’s something funnier in the history of comics than Mark’s pose in panel two here, I can’t imagine what it might be! Since he’s talking, I’m pretty sure he’s not actually running yet, just posing extremely dynamically to impress upon Abbey how very fast they’re going to have to run in order to not suffer an awful death by lava.

Pluggers, 12/6/16

“Nothing gets a dog hornier for a chicken than the smell of fruit pastry” –a nationally syndicated comic panel, apparently

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Spider-Man, 11/16/16

You know that normally I’d be very in favor of a punchline panel in Newspaper Spider-Man where our heroes mope wordlessly. But as a transit rider and advocate, I must protest against a train ride being used as visual equivalent of a sad trombone. Especially in the New York City region! Why, Peter and Scott will be back home in Queens while Jonah and Hank are still stuck on the Long Island Expressway, Jonah shouting furiously at his driver and other cars while Hank scrunches down in his seat and pretends not to notice.

It’s also obviously way too soon for the first Daily Bugle under J. Jonah Jameson’s new regime to have come out, so I assume the banner headline in the paper Scott is reading is over a story about how New York is now for the first time in years entirely free of Ant-Men. Gonna be an awkward correction at the bottom of page C-12 tomorrow!

Crock, 11/16/16

It does take some warming up to, but Wadsworth is laying out his people’s philosophy in a nutshell. Vultures don’t believe in fairies or make believe. They believe in each other, and their own ability to make this world a better place for themselves and their families. They believe they’re capable of anything, even getting money when their baby teeth fall out despite the fact that they don’t have any teeth.

Pluggers, 11/16/16

One of the longstanding mysteries of Pluggers can be summed up pretty simply: what is a plugger, exactly? Today’s strip I think encapsulates it nicely: a plugger is someone young enough that they still know people who move and old enough that they know a lot of people who are dying, and also someone who hasn’t figured out that you can put addresses into your computer now.

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Six Chix, 10/26/16

Happy early Halloween from Six Chix, everybody! I note that these pumpkin-people’s heads and arms are the same bright orange color, which I take to indicate that they are similar in substance and consistency. What prospect do you find spoooookier?

• That their whole bodies are tough and durable, like pumpkin’s shell, which means that every time they move their outer layer grinds painfully and loudly against itself
• That their whole bodies are soft and pliant, like ordinary flesh, even their huge, bulbous heads

Your answer may hinge on how you believe the pumpkin-beings’ faces manifest. Do they merely appear when one of them finally determines the emotion they want to express? Or must they be carved, with a knife?

Funky Winkerbean, 10/26/16

Ha ha, angry rage maniac Bull Bushka’s brain is so battered that his angry rage mania is now an integral part of his personality, says his wife, who has to share a house with him and his irrational violent outbursts all the time now that he’s retired! This isn’t setting up teeth-grindingly awful and tragic storyline for the future, at all!

Pluggers, 10/26/16

You’re a plugger if you don’t just hate reading but try to shame your spouse for liking it.