Post Content

Family Circus, 6/13/18

I’m not sure who’s reactive facial expression in this panel I love more: Sam, striking a noble pose and working very hard to look like he can’t understand what Jeffy is talking about, that his position as morally superior to the other Keane dog, named “Barfy” for what I assume are obvious reasons, is still intact; or Mommy, cringing inside, worrying that Jeffy doesn’t need any sort of even vague hint that peeing on the floor is, in fact, an option.

Rhymes With Orange, 6/13/18

FUN FACT: did you know that even in the blessed afterlife, where we’ll spend eternity glorying in the close companionship of God, we will, eventually, grow bored with our existence, and seek new and ever more extreme ways to stimulate ourselves? And that without the prospect of bodily infirmity or death to create a natural end to this process, it can only escalate? Suddenly Lucifer’s rebellion against his Creator becomes easier to understand!

Spider-Man, 6/13/18

“–you need a refresher course in Spider-Man 101! First lesson: you’d think the whole point of spider-sense would be that it warns me about stuff when I’m not paying attention. But turns out nope! Turns out I have to be paying very close attention for it work. And if you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Wow, that’s pretty lame, and not really very impressive at all,’ well, wait till you hear about the rest of my whole deal!”

Pluggers, 6/13/18

You’re a plugger if you’ve had ten years, literally a decade, to figure out what the App Store is, but you just haven’t, and you have no plans to do so going forward, either.

Hi and Lois, 6/13/18

Ha ha, it’s funny because the baby has crippling anxiety that prevents her from experiencing uncomplicated happiness for more than a brief moment!

Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/9/18

So Snuffy miraculously reconnected with his long-lost (and long-asleep?) father a few months ago, and since then the elder Smith posed for a family photo and, uh, has gone to jail. It’s really sad how quickly the family culture of criminality has pulled him back in again.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/9/18

So far all the terrible wordplay-units in this week’s Funky Winkerbean have been about electronic music, and, well, I get the whole “opening Pandora’s box” concept they’re working with here, but: do you think we’re meant to understand that Harry Dinkle, the fictional character, is vaguely aware of Pandora as “a music thing on the computer” and assumes it/she is some kind of electronica artist? Or do we have to admit that maybe every single person involved in the creation of this strip has made the same error, in real life?

Pluggers, 6/9/18

Call me a coastal elitist if you will, but I won’t believe this plugger actually knows the answer is “no” until we see him say it.

Post Content

Spider-Man, 6/4/18

There are of course plenty of different schools of thought on storytelling. Some people will say that every detail should point towards the eventual resolution of the narrative, and if that’s the template Newspaper Spider-Man is going for perhaps this angry cabbie will show up up at a crucial part of the climax, out for revenge. But many writers like adding little grace note details to their stories, which make the world of their tales feel more filled out and lived in, and clarify the nature of their characters, without really pertaining to the plot. I assume that’s what’s going on here as Peter Parker is berated by a cabbie as a cheapskate. While Peter himself doesn’t make much money, his wife is a successful actress and, honestly, he doesn’t even attempt to beg poverty. “Sorry. Didn’t have that much money on me,” he says casually. “I just didn’t think ahead, and now you have suffer for it. Oh well!”

Dennis the Menace and Pluggers, 6/4/18

Here we have two men in the twilight of their lives evaluating their priorities in very different ways. Mr. Wilson rejects Dennis’s extremely non-menacing nutritional advice, for a number of obvious reasons: he’s already lived a good long life, and why not enjoy the time he has left, or at least use the fleeting joy of a sugar rush to distract from the fact that what should’ve been his golden years are being spent constantly feuding with the child who lives next door? Then there’s our elderly dog-man plugger, whose house and body are in equal states of disrepair. He could try getting out the toolbox and fixing up the house — he is a plugger, after all, and that’s the sort of thing they do — but, you know, he’ll be dead soon, so why bother? The stair will outlive the knee, at least, and soon he won’t be able to walk down the steps anymore to hear the squeak. Then it’ll be somebody else’s problem.