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Andy Capp, 4/22/16

On October 20, 2004, a mere three months after I launched this blog, I received an email that consisted entirely of “ANDY CAPP!” repeated 44 times, plus 10 times in the subject line. And now, eleven and half years later, I’ve finally decided: why not Andy Capp? So I’ve started reading Andy Capp, which is a strip that I’m not entirely unfamiliar with. The domestic violence laffs seem to have been excised, but all the other markers of stereotypical working-class British loutishness are still there: “Andy spends all his time at the pub,” “Andy is unnecessarily violent during pickup soccer games,” “Andy is drunk constantly,” “Andy can’t hold a job,” etc. As an American, of course, I yearn for the window into this culturally specific milieu, but then you have episodes like today’s, where the joke mainly seems to be “Andy is an asshole.” It was smart to to put “GB” on Guitar Bob’s guitar case, so there’s no doubt as to what’s going on. It took three people to make this strip!

Momma, 4/22/16

Wait, Momma, don’t be so quick to cut off whatever explanation is being offered here, as I definitely don’t understand what’s happening. Is that lady … trying to give her children to Momma? I don’t know what’s sadder: the look of desperation on this other woman’s face as her attempt to rid herself of parental responsibility fails, or her children’s expressions of utter indifference, as if this were just one more baffling episode in a chaotic and confusing life.

Dennis the Menace, 4/22/16

I was going to write a long, elegiac paragraph about Alice’s sly facial expression and how sometimes we have to tell lies to the people we love in order to get them to do the things they need to do to thrive, but then the phrase “the anus is the ear of the butt” popped into my head and I can’t stop giggling about it, sorry.

Pluggers, 4/22/16

Pluggers only get “participation trophies” when all their friends are dead.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/17/16

At long last, the day we’ve all been waiting for: Sarah Morgan’s book is available in print! As near as I can tell this strip from May 2013 is the beginning of that saga, so the whole project from genesis to execution took … just short of three years? In the soap opera comics, which move at a notoriously glacial pace? And it took me, a real adult human who lives in the ordinary timestream three and a half years after my Kickstarter to get my book out? Ugggh. Anyway, come to my book tour April 26 in Washington, DC or April 28 in Baltimore or May 2 in Brooklyn or May 5 in Buffalo, so I can outsell this terrible sphere-headed child-golem, at least!

Archie, 4/17/16

I’m sorry, Mr. Lodge, but nobody wearing that red-and-yellow nightmare has the right to criticize anybody else’s clothing choices. It’s really too bad for him that having a servant entirely for the purpose of dressing the master of the house has apparently fallen out of favor amongst the ultra-rich.

Family Circus, 4/17/16

I absolutely love how furious Jeffy looks in the rightmost panel here. I know Billy’s statement is supposed to be a response to his sour face, but it looks like it’s the other way around and he’s just so mad about this dumb aphorism. “Grandma isn’t here, Billy. The best part about Grandma not being here is that we don’t have to listen to this shit.”

Pluggers, 4/17/16

Pluggers remember when they used to be able to guide their grandchildren away from Darwin’s Satanic lies, back before their damn daughter-in-law started pitching a fit because she and the public schools knew better than the Bible.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/17/16

Remember, If Your Strip Ends With Even The Vaguest Play On Words, That’s Technically A “Punchline,” Even If It’s Incredibly Depressing: The Funky Winkerbean Story

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Beetle Bailey, 4/14/16

You might not believe it based on the nonstop stream of cruel vitriol I heap upon comics creators daily, but writing this blog over the years has actually given me a lot of sympathy for the people who write these things. Coming up with a joke a day within the same little world, every day, for years and years is hard, man, even for the team of people they have down at ol’ Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC. I mean, I get it. Some days you’re just staring at a blank panel and are trying to figure out how you can wring a few laughs out of it, and clearly, as the deadline loomed, today’s jokesmith could think of nothing except for falling off a cliff into the sweet embrace of death, which might be something they should talk to a trained therapist about. But anyway, I’d argue that the second panel here is wholly unnecessary. Beetle and Killer dully contemplating the fact that their fellow soldiers just can’t stop falling off cliffs, while staring at a handwritten note on a bulletin board that, in a plea for sanity that will surely go unheeded, urges everyone to “AVOID CLIFF”, is the funniest thing in the comics today, and probably the funniest thing to happen in Beetle Bailey ever.

Gil Thorp, 4/14/16

Boy, the softball action in Gil Thorp sure is a lot more exciting when it’s drawn like an German expressionist film, right? Pitcher and catcher stand at opposite ends of some long corridor, then suddenly are practically on top of one another, representing the way the emotional space between us can sometimes collapse into sudden moments of terrifying intimacy.

Pluggers, 4/14/16

The look of profound shame on those he-pluggers’ faces makes me think that the caption to this panel should actually be “plugger moms seem to be the only ones in the house who actually use toilet paper.”