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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.

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Mary Worth, 4/18/18

Ha ha ha oh my God they really are going to fire Wilbur, aren’t they? You know, I’ve heard some grumbling from some of you ingrates that Mary Worth has been spending too much energy on this Wilbur storyline, and all I can say is: how dare you. Do I want to see everything taken away from Wilbur, see him tormented by his sadistic creator, like a combovered Job for our modern age? I do. You’re damn right I do. Let me drink in his suffering! Ahhh, that’s it. That’s the stuff.

Pluggers, 4/18/18

I was going to make fun of this plugger here, but I then I remembered a couple weeks ago I was briefly convinced that I had a cancerous growth on my tongue but then after like 45 seconds or so I figured out it was just the shell of a popcorn kernel really glommed on, way in the back. I was going to at least feel smug that I didn’t need a medical professional to tell me this, but then I remembered a few months before that this spot on my gums had been bleeding and irritated and I figured my parents’ history of gum disease had finally caught up with me, but then I went to the dentist and he pulled out this huge sliver of popcorn kernel that had gotten wedged between my teeth for days, and then after that my gums were fine. I guess the lesson here is that I eat too much popcorn, but can you think of another cheap, delicious, and healthy snack I can make in just minutes in a countertop air popper? It’s worth all the drama!

Dennis the Menace, 4/18/18

“Ha ha, I’m kidding! Of course I am! It’s just … got any pills? Just a little something to take the edge off his ‘himself,’ if you follow me? Something I can put in his food? Something that would be poisonous if you put in a lot of it, but if you only put in a little it would just, like, slow him down a little bit? Remember, doc, you can’t spell ‘factitious disorder imposed on another, aka Munchausen syndrome by proxy’ without ‘freedom!’”

POSTSCRIPT: UPDATE TO TODAY’S PLUGGERS COMMENTARY: OH NOOOOOOO

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Pluggers, 4/5/18

Are you an ordinary biological life form made of meat and bone? Are you trying to transcend those limitations by festooning your flesh-shell with baubles made of gold or jewels? Well, pluggers are way ahead of you. Pluggers are enhancing their bodies with metal and machinery, to become something greater, something powerful, something more. I honestly did not anticipate this new direction for Pluggers, but I am very much here for it.

Dennis the Menace, 4/5/18

Your mother is a young woman, Dennis, and probably sees her still-young child as a reflection of her own youth. Letting her know that you, who will almost certainly outlive her, already feel the icy breath of mortality on the back of your neck is menacing indeed.

Family Circus, 4/5/18

“What’s her angle? Is she plotting against me? Against us? Are we in a blood feud with grandma? I’ve been waiting for this day all my life.”