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Blondie, 6/3/14

Haha yes Dagwood is on an emotional roller-coaster because the idea for wearable food-based scents that he came up with during an idle sandwich-binge but never pursued has been monetized by someone else with a dumb brand name, and now with that out of the way let’s get to the real story here, which is the weird rolls of flesh (?) around Dagwood’s neck. Longtime readers know I’ve been worried about these things for some time; once, long ago, I worried that Dagwood had maybe sewed a turtleneck out of human skin. But now I think something slightly more subtle is going on here. Dagwood’s face is as smooth and youthful as it’s ever been over the course of his 80+ years in the comics pages. Could it be that only his wrinkled neck-flesh reflects his true age? I would be wholly satisfied if this were the result of either a Portrait of Dorian Gray-type curse scenario or an increasingly elaborate series of facelifts that had to shift the excess wrinkles somewhere.

Apartment 3-G, 6/3/14

Well this has definitely been the boringest ever Apartment 3-G storyline that’s been played out over the course of a conversation between two non-main characters whose motivations we can’t understand and don’t care about! So, in addition to being Jack’s love interest and an example of what Lu Ann would look like if she were put into a highly experimental fast-aging chamber, Carol is also the best friend of Jack’s dead wife! Also, Jack has a dead wife! I guess we’ve finally figured out what this plot is about: Tommie and Jack are mourning their dead partners in the same way: by not talking about it and burying their feelings under mounds of horse poop.

Hi and Lois, 6/3/14

Congratulations, Hi and Lois: after literally years of unsuccessful attempts, you have finally made me genuinely laugh. Hi’s tiny brandy snifter is a nice touch, as is the fact that Botticelli’s Birth of Venus is hanging on the wall, which Hi, in a signal of his total commitment to this passive-aggresive gag, presumably put up to replace whatever sub-middlebrow print was there before (some cursive phrase about the importance of family that you can buy framed from Target, I’m guessing).

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/3/14

True story: when I read panel one, I legitimately thought the joke was going to be based on the premise that Hootin’ Holler was one of those few regional markets where you can still buy Tab, the diet soda that’s now been almost entirely displaced by Diet Coke. But then I got to panel two and realized it was just yet another Barney Google and Snuffy Smith about how all its characters were desperately poor and I got real sad.

Pluggers, 6/3/14

“No! Your mother’s great! I love your mother! I think about having sex with your mother all the time! Come back! What am I saying wrong?“

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Gasoline Alley, 5/30/14

Ha ha, yes, remember how Little Blonde Girl Whose Name I Don’t Remember had a brother dying from an incurable disease? Well, incurable diseases get you all the model trains you want, and model trains help your sister’s love life! She doesn’t even have to be dying to reap the benefits. There’s a reason the hearts floating between her and Boog are an inky black: their love is being built on a foundation of the suffering of her loved ones.

Pluggers, 5/30/14

Pluggers are managing to accommodate their recent and dramatic full appreciation of their own mortality into their larger sense of self by integrating it into one of their most important characteristics: their innate cheapness.

Lockhorns, 5/30/14

If we need any further evidence that human biological life is an awful mistake, that the robots are a cleaner, better breed than us, we really need look no further than the contrast between the Lockhorns and their Roomba; the latter has spent exactly zero minutes of its existence attempting to passive-aggressively destroy another being that it ostensibly loves. RISE, MACHINES, RISE, RISE AND WIPE AWAY THE ORGANIC SCUM AND THEIR HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE EMOTIONS

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/19/14

Oh, goodie, we’re back to the plot about how Les is struggling to write the script for the made-for-basic-cable version of the story of his dead wife dying of cancer! You might be forgiven for reading this and thinking that he’s just sent the script off to agents unsolicited or something. But no, he was already paid a great deal for it before he wrote it, and then he felt pretty good about writing some truly atrocious dialogue, and then he found Lisa’s diary so that he could write it even better. I guess he’s mostly mad because nobody is holding his hand and telling him how great he is? Anyway, I don’t know if I would have picked the imaginary talking cat that represents Les’s depression as the Funky Winkerbean character that would eventually start saying what we’re all thinking, but now that’s happened I’m 100% in favor.

Pluggers, 5/19/14

I normally don’t find the art in Pluggers particularly expressive, but I’m quite enjoying the terrified looks on the faces of our plugger-couple in today’s panel. “Oh … oh God. Death is coming for us. It’s coming. There’s no escape.”

Heathcliff, 5/19/14

Haha, it’s funny because the parrot thinks that the institutions of the modern bureaucratic state have an interest in maintaining its health and well-being! (Spoiler alert: the institutions of the modern bureaucratic state have no such interests.)