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Bizarro, 12/6/23

A fun fact is that while “Frankenstein,” in the sense of a story about creature sewn together from corpses and reanimated via forbidden science with unexpected results, is in the public domain, Frankenstein’s monster, in the sense of the green-skinned corpse guy with a flat head and bolts in his neck, is the intellectual property of Universal Studios, for whom that design was created in 1931. I really had it in my mind that the flat top of the head was meant to indicate that the skull had been sliced open to drop a brain into it, but I can’t find any citation to that now; however, the Wikipedia article for Frankenstein’s monster does have the unsettling note that “Jack P. Pierce … based the monster’s face and iconic flat head shape on a drawing Pierce’s daughter (whom Pierce feared to be psychic) had drawn from a dream.” Anyway, today’s strip raises a lot more questions than it answers: are the Monster and his Bride having sex, reproductively, and are their corpse-mangled qualities passed down to their offspring via some Lamarckian mechanism? Or did the pair conspire to reproduce the sins of their creator, assembling in their own image a son from scavenged corpse parts, continuing the hideous cycle? Also, is the kid’s full name “Frankenstein’s Monster Junior,” and does he get mad if people just call him or his father “Frankenstein?” I honestly care about all this much more than his potential head injury situation.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/6/23

This week’s Rex Morgan is really just dragging out a plotline we had all hoped would be done by now, but honestly I’ve been enjoying a lot of the facial expressions so I’ll give it a pass. Today, Mr. Ollman (get it? he’s an “old man”????) has hit the end of his patience with this entire conversation, as his face in panel three makes very clear. “Look, doc, I came here because I need my prostate checked out and I heard you weren’t gonna give me a lot of pushback when I asked for a painkiller prescription. I stopped making new acquaintances 15 years ago, and I certainly don’t want to hear anything about some Italian I’m supposed to know, got it?”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/6/23

It seems to me that you should be rewarding a budding young musician for time spent honing and practicing his craft in whatever way works best for; demanding a new song in exchange for each cookie feels like it’s encouraging quantity over quality, just my take.

Gasoline Alley, 12/6/23

Rufus’s dick has burst out of his elf costume, right? That’s what’s going on here? He’s hanging hog? That’s what’s going to get the beloved comic strip Gasoline Alley cancelled after all these years? Rufus with his dick out?

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Marvin, 12/5/23

I actually really enjoy the implication of this cartoon, which is that Bitsy doesn’t understand the idea that having your picture taken results in a image that other people will see — like, he thinks he just has to sit still wearing a dumb hat for a little bit, but once the process is over there will be no further consequences and nobody else will be the wiser about his demeaning little outfit — but he absolutely knows what it means to post something on social media. We need more baroque and weird versions of the “animals in comics have some human knowledge but not all of it” trope! Forget “this dog can write but not spell things properly” gag, give us baffling gaps in understanding like this one!

Mary Worth, 12/5/23

Haha, turns out Brad is here not for Kitty but for Sonia. Specifically, he’s here to collaborate on the “fight the system” t-shirts that are Sonia’s main form of political activism. Were you thinking about supporting the police, the military, or any of the other pillars of traditional American society that also happened to employ Sonia’s absentee father? Well, not if these cool t-shirts have anything to say about it! Anyway, Kitty understands the real problem with this kind of all-branding, no-substance approach to social justice, which is that it can really cramp your style when you’re trying to bring some ex-Marine back home and have sex with him.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/5/23

I’m sorry, are you telling me you couldn’t get a good self-help cult rolling with your program in the 1970s? Maybe you were never the guy to put it into action, then. Maybe you should just let Rene have this one!

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Mary Worth, 12/4/23

Oh, wow, it turns out Sonia isn’t the only disrespectful person in Kitty’s life, and her smooch with Keith was actually interrupted by this guy Brad. “It’s not what you think!” she protests to the person who knocked her up 20 years ago and who she’s been on two dates with since, as if he had some kind of jurisdiction over her. “I would never have a no-strings-attach fuck buddy relationship with a guy who wore a dumb hat like this! He did not wear the hat the other times he came by for sex!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/4/23

Sigh, it looks like Rene really did rip off this guy’s self-help method, but maybe it’s worth it because this series of events has resulted in one of the most profound Rex pissyfaces we’ve ever seen. That’s a man who’s experiencing depths of contempt he never before thought possible. I’m assuming he’s grunting out “Self-help program … you created!?!” like Frankenstein’s monster, his outrage thickening his tongue and taking away his ability to use linking words like “that”.

Arctic Circle, 12/4/23

I genuinely love the expression on the rabbit’s face here. He’s immediately and involuntarily imagining the horrifying scene — a massive, powerful polar bear ripping off the top of a camper, pulling out a half-sleeping surfer and devouring them, their screams echoing across the landscape and the snow besplattered with their blood and viscera. He’s a simple vegetarian! He’s not built to think about such horrors!

Pluggers, 12/4/23

I’ve been making jokes about Pluggers for more than 17 years at this point, and in all that time I have frankly gotten no closer to answering the perennial “what is a plugger?” question. But that doesn’t mean I’m just going to sit back and let “You’re a plugger if you’re allergic to dust, or possibly pine needles” slip by. No. Absolutely not. I refute this!