Post Content

Hi and Lois, 6/5/22

I think telling stories out of chronological order has gone from being an innovation to something of a crutch or gimmick at this point, but there are times when it still works. Like, I’m thinking about this Hi and Lois from a couple weeks ago totally differently now that I know that the twins are trying to get extra scoops of breakfast ice cream at like 8 in the morning, and their dad is waiting in the car because he’s still groggy and disoriented.

Crankshaft, 6/5/22

One of my very first shocking insider discoveries about the comics-production process when I started doing this blog was that the daily strips were colored in by syndicate folks who aren’t the strip artist, leading to occasionally troubling errors. But the Sunday strips? Those, in theory, are colored by the same people who draw them, which means you can treat the entire scene as a unified whole. That explains why all these people have fallen asleep, because they’ve clearly decided to have their Sunday Afternoon Book Club at a law office and are having a hard time staying engaged while reading the identically bound volumes of the city code cover to cover.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/5/22

I love how angry Rex looks when he says “You want me to come down there in the middle of the night just to save somebody’s life?” but as soon as the cop is like “Nah, you’d just get in the way,” he’s like, “Of course, officer, I’ll help in any way I can. I’m a hero!”

Post Content

Mary Worth, 6/3/22

You know, Dawn, you rally ought to listen to your friend Cathy. She’s got a lot of common sense! Thanks to faithful reader Rita Lake who dug up some old links, we now know that she’s really matured a lot since 2011, when she said Dawn was lucky to have Wilbur as a dad, a perfectly insane statement even when delivered in the context of Cathy’s dad being dead. She’s also really matured a lot — and by “matured a lot” I mean “completely physically transformed” — since the time she interrupted Dawn’s sexually obsessive thoughts about her art history prof back in 2015. It’s possible that this isn’t the same Cathy? Maybe Dawn only allows herself to have one female friend at a time, and they always have to be named Cathy, but other than that she’s open to a lot of different possibilities.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/3/22

“I mean, this guy prescribed Cosentyx® for me like a pro. I didn’t even have to ask about it like they said in the TV ad, he already had a bunch of pens and notepads and stuff around the office with the name all over them. It’s … mostly cleared up now, I guess? Anyway, he seems like the kind of guy who could handle a delicate hostage negotiation, based on that one interaction I had with him.”

Beetle Bailey, 6/3/22

Look, I don’t pretend to be entirely sure what’s going on here, but the important thing is that Sarge is finally going to pay for his crimes of cartoonishly overwrought violence, in prison.

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 6/2/22

So Gregg wore his dumb mask, the opposing team figured out he was blind and peppered him with bunts, and now he’s real depressed and giving up even the pretense that he’s a teenager. “Look at my hair!” he shouts. “I’m an old man! The only reason I’d go to the park is to yell at the young women about how they should dress more decently in public!”

Mary Worth, 6/2/22

Speaking of dressing indecently, oh my goodness, after a dull few days when Dawn and Jared endlessly rehashed his intense insecurity about the fact that she looked at another boy at the zoo and coming to what seemed like a boring consensus about how it was nothing and nobody should fret about it, Dawn is now going to Da Club behind Jared’s back, because their relationship is in fact extremely unhealthy! The last time we saw Dawn out at what I assume is Santa Royale’s hottest and noisiest goth club, she was there with her art history professor and surprised her dad’s ex while wearing this truly incredible outfit. Tonight’s ensemble, with just a hint of bondage around the décolletage, is somewhat more subtle, but I still appreciate the occasional forays into Dawn Fashion to help me keep up with what the kids are into these days. Anyway, does her friend … have a nose? A whole nose? It looks like she might not, right? And her name is Cathy? Hmmmmmmm?

Funky Winkerbean, 6/2/22

The joke here is that the boy waited till after graduation to ask out the girl so there’s no time for them to really form a relationship before they go away to college, but I think this strip would be funnier if she actually just decided she didn’t like him and instead of politely riding out the next few hours is telling him repeatedly that there will be no date #2.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/2/22

Oh, man, I certainly hope they don’t call Rex until the Sunday strip, because we’re gonna need a lot of panels for his ponderous, exasperated sigh.