Post Content

Dick Tracy, 1/21/15

Sure, Westview is haunted by death, but death of the quiet, drawn-out, hospice-based variety. Dick and Sam are about to bring a new kind of death to town: loud, abrupt, and very, very bloody.

Mark Trail, 1/21/15

Gotta be impressed with Mark’s hair, which has gone through a boat explosion and some quality time surrounded by flaming oil slicks and has barely moved at all.

Sally Forth, 1/21/15

Little did I know, when I wished for a new Apartment 3-G artist last week, that Sally Forth already had in the works a flash-forward that’s doubling as a backdoor pilot for an Apartment 3-G reboot!

Spider-Man, 1/21/15

Peter Parker has been forced to rescue Mary Jane from an out-of-control movie marketing robot out of costume. Presumably he’s unharmed because he has, uh, spider-durability (the relative ribcage strength of a … spider?), but if he pretends to be hurt and sues the movie studio, this will turn out to be his most effective and lucrative act of heroism to date.

Wizard of Id, 1/21/15

“Boy, I sure have noticed and/or been sexually aroused by a lot of young women lately! Fortunately, I have a nationally syndicated newspaper comic strip, so I’ll be able to talk about this fact in a way that won’t come across as creepy at all.”

Post Content

Sally Forth, 10/3/14

True Story: Sally Forth is the comic strip that first got me thinking seriously about comics time, the phenomenon by which characters in a long-running comic stay basically the same age, but the cultural signifiers surrounding them also stay current which implies that not only their present but their past is slowly moving forward through the space-time continuum. Because it’s hard to notice that strip-time present is changing to match real-life present, you tend to notice this most during flashback sequences, as I did when an early ’00s Sally Forth storyline about Ted and Sally meeting in college featured Ted wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt. I’d been reading the strip since I was a child, and so obviously Ted and Sally were my parents’ age, and this blew up everything I thought I knew.

Anyway, something about this particular storyline, about Sally and Alice meeting for the first time twenty years ago, has been nagging at me all week, and I finally put my finger on it: Alice is in fact sporting 1994’s hottest haircut, the Rachel, which works great for the milieu but makes the fact that her current-day character model still has the same Mid-’80s Business Lady Hair that she’s always had seem even stranger.

Spider-Man, 10/3/14

SUPERHERO: “I’m trapped! I’ve got to use my superpowers to escape!”

[SUPERHERO tries for, like, thirty seconds]

SUPERHERO: “Well, that didn’t work. Time to resign myself to death!”

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN!!!!!!!!!!!

Beetle Bailey, 10/3/14

It’s funny because you can tell the chili is too hot because it’s on fire and also Beetle is literally cringing in pain and his face-flesh is covered with horrible burns

Post Content

Six Chix, 8/24/14

Pluggers II — Ascension

The Change came faster than anyone could have imagined. Proto-pluggers, still in animal form, quickly learned to operate the machines left for them as the humans devolved. Seduced by simple sense-pleasures, their former masters abandoned the responsibilities of economic life, cleaning up after themselves, and caring for their — what did they call them in the Before Times? Oh, yes — pets.

Mark Trail, 8/24/14

It’s good to see that despite the change at the helm, Sunday Mark Trail is sticking to its time-honored themes. Take it from NOAA: whether by tidal wave, lightning, flash flood, or this tornado here, Nature is an implacable monster and will stone cold kill you — probably by blowing up your barn or throwing a tractor at you or some shit. We oughta global-warm the hell outa that bitch.

Sally Forth, 8/24/14

Faithful readers, summer is on the wane. Think of the pops. You know Ted has. The pops! Soon they will be but a memory.

Crankshaft, 8/24/14

If you’re looking for humor, try “the food is terrible — and the portions are so small!” But if you’re in the mood for mean, pinch-lipped, incoherent spite, you can’t go wrong with Crankshaft.

Ohmigod, Josh — just two days until you hit the road! HURRY HURRY HURRY!

–Uncle Lumpy