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Mother Goose and Grimm, 4/4/19

This won’t be the first time I’ve dwelled on this, but I do think it’s funny how certain objects have just sort of become an archetype for “things that dogs pee on,” like fire hydrants or trees. Dogs will, for the record, pee pretty much anywhere, but they do like a vertical thing where other dogs can sniff, I guess, so trees are more likely that not what you’re likely to see your dog peeing on when you take them for a walk. My point is that today’s Mother Goose and Grimm only works because we have an iconographic context for it: we get that the joke is that “dogs pee on trees, the air freshener looks like a tree, it’s funny because Grimm has mistaken this symbol for the physical object it emulates.” But imagine someone who for whatever cultural reasons wouldn’t be able to make those connections! To them, this is just a comic panel about a dog threatening to piss all over the inside of a car, while his owner begs him not to.

Crankshaft, 4/4/19

In yesterday’s Crankshaft, Crankshaft asked the stewardess for a Coke and she asked if Pepsi were OK and he said “No” and that was the whole strip! Today he just keeps hitting the “call attendant” light and irritating the stewardess for no reason. I know that usually “Crankshaft is an asshole” is the subtext to every Crankshaft punchline, but I guess they’ve decided to make it the text this week? And it’s only Thursday, so buckle up!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/4/19

Sure, Rex was in a plane that almost crashed, but the irritating person he encountered in the process got arrested and slagged on by his own twin brother, and also Rex was showered with praise and free stuff for doing really the bare minimum of keeping an eye on a kid who quite frankly wasn’t showing any inclination to wander off or anything. Honestly the only substantive inconvenience he encountered through this whole ordeal was that he had to leave his bag behind on the plane, and, well, good news, everybody!

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Dennis the Menace, 4/1/19

There were a bunch of comics today whose “punchlines” involved characters playing April Fools Day pranklets on each other, and it really affirmed my cranky opinions that (a) April Fools Day is dumb and (b) there are few things less funny in a comic strip than characters doing things that are supposed to be funny within the universe of the comic strip. Still, I kind of enjoyed today’s Dennis the Menace, because in the first panel, we can see that Mr. Wilson’s curmudgeonly demeanor around Dennis is no act. He harbors no secret affection for the lad who’s apparently in his house virtually every day. Nobody’s looking at him here; his face is turned away from Martha, so there’s nobody he’s putting on a performance for. He’s genuinely ecstatic that the little boy who’s made a mockery of the peaceful retirement he spent a lifetime saving for is leaving, and when he finds out that’s a lie — a lie all the more cruel because it comes from his wife, the woman who knows more than anyone how much he wants it to be true — he’s utterly crushed. APRIL FOOLS!!!!!! :) :) :)

Funky Winkerbean, 4/1/19

Funky Winkerbean, to its credit, constantly does the bit where one character tells a joke that utterly fails to land and then has to explain or justify it, and that explanation is somehow supposed to be the “punchline” of the comic. This strip doesn’t need April Fools Day as an opportunity demonstrate that the whole process of trying to make other people laugh is a frustrating and ultimately fruitless endeavor.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/1/19

I love how completely gobsmacked Sarah looks in the final panel here. “You mean … there are adults who react to events with normal human emotions, rather than just suffocating everything with a comforting blanket of smug superiority? Unheard of!”

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Spider-Man, 3/28/19

Yes, we’ve all been very sad about the end of Newspaper Spider-Man, but at least we’ve been promised a trip through the strip’s forty-plus years of archives before King Features and/or Marvel figure out how to better cash in on MCU Mania in the funny pages. This week we’re getting our first rerun storyline and it’s from … literally less than five years ago????? Come the heck on, Newspaper Spider-Man, I want to see Peter Parker being a sullen dick in the ’70s and I will not be featuring you on this web-log until then, good day sir

Dennis the Menace, 3/28/19

The smile on the gentleman’s face says “Ahh, he wants to menace me with heckling, but he’s still too young for dick jokes.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/28/19

“They’re not twins, and in fact one of them’s adopted! So, this could make for a great nature vs. nurture study if one of them turns out to be real shitty. And that’s the sort of research that could get me invited to a lot more of these medical conferences where I wouldn’t have to spend time with either of them, now that I think about it!”

Mary Worth, 3/28/19

Heeeeeeeeeeere comes the grift, everybody