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Mary Worth, 1/28/19

Monday is starting with BIG MARY WORTH NEWS, everybody: it turns out that Professor Ian Cameron will not just give you a good grade even if you don’t do your assignments, no matter how vigorously you wink at him. With that out of the way, we can now begin to explore the fact that he’s been ignoring his wife for entirely non-affair-related reasons, probably because he just doesn’t like her very much.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/28/19

Hmm, now I’m beginning to lean away from my longstanding “Hootin’ Holler is an extremely impoverished community that’s geographically, economically, and culturally isolated from mainstream American life” theory and pivoting to “Hootin’ Holler is a deliberately anachronistic intentional community/compound, much like the titular setting of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.’

Dennis the Menace, 1/28/19

Dennis Mitchell only received the nickname “the Menace” during his trial for crimes against humanity, when the results of his awful genetic experiments came to light, but there were signs of what was to come from a very early stage in his life.

Family Circus, 1/28/19

Ha ha, kids sure say the darndest things in Munchausen syndrome by proxy situations!

Sam and Silo, 1/28/19

I admit that I’m still having a hard time trying to figure out what Sam and Silo’s deal is, even in terms of its cultural situation, by which I mean: what are the things outside of itself, in the larger cultural universe, that it references? Today we have name-checked the most famous political crisis in American history and … a 2006 cheating scandal in international test cricket? Never change, Sam and Silo, you delightfully unplaceably weird strip!

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Sam and Silo, 1/5/19

I admit to being kind of charmed by my own inability to get a firm handle on what the deal is with Sam and Silo, exactly. Like, today starts off seeming like another in a continuing series of “Sam should see a mental health professional” strips, but then takes a turn in the final panel to horror! Or maybe just a turn from “Sam should see a mental health professional about his depression” to “Sam should see a mental health professional about his psychotic break.”

Funky Winkerbean, 1/5/19

You can forgive a long-running strip like Funky Winkerbean for reveling in its own lore a bit, I suppose, but things get tricky when you contrast its wacky, light-hearted past with its curren omnipresent cloud of grimness. For instance, I’m sure at some point it was hilarious that school budgetary cuts required the Scapegoats to tote injured players off the field using equipment that no medical professional would endorse. But the fact that one of the people reminiscing fondly about this episode has suffered permanent cognitive damage due to his high school football career casts a little bit of a pall over the whole thing.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/5/19

You guys, Sarah Morgan is just now hearing about this business where the climate can vary across differing geographies and she is not OK with it.

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Dennis the Menace, 12/11/18

Dennis knows that it would be extremely menacing if someone were to tip off the Mossad about the location of Georg Wilhelm, one of the last SS commanders still at large.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/11/18

“I actually get a commission for referring your son to the hospital, which is why I’m here: to make sure you pay for the surgery. Remember all that paperwork you signed? Bet you wish you’d read it now, huh?”

Sam and Silo, 12/11/18

Bit by bit, I’m figuring Sam and Silo out. Now I know which one is Sam and which is Silo! Sam is the one with severe clinical depression.