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Sam and Silo, 12/7/18

I still don’t really have a handle on what Sam and Silo’s whole “deal” is. Is it a comic about a robe-wearing cowboy (?) who hangs out with nuns, or is it a comic about a generic white-collar guy who eats soup in diners? Why does the generic white-collar guy not eat soup by lifting his spoon to his mouth, like a normal person, but instead lowers his entire body down to meet it? Is “lowering his body” even what he’s doing here? Is his head retracting into his torso, like a turtle? Hopefully I’ll be able to bring you answers to these questions as this situation develops.

Crock, 12/7/18

You probably think that legacy strips like Crock are comfortable just running in their grooves, never really breaking new ground or exploring their cast of characters. But the joke’s on you, because today, more than six years after the strip promised to stop publishing, we learn that beloved character [checks Wikipedia] “Maggot” isn’t just the camp’s resident latrine digger: he’s also a cannibal, and one who’s tired of eating ordinary men and women and now hungers for celebrity flesh.

Mark Trail, 12/7/18

So it turns out Raul did not fall to his death, but instead crashed through this nice couple’s skylight and, apparently, into their dinner? Normally I can’t get enough of extreme closeups on the faces of these bug-eyed caricatures, but I’m assuming Raul is sprawled out on the dining room table, covered in delicious, piping hot cochinita pibil, sopa de lima, and other delicacies of the Yucatan, and I want to see the carnage, darn it.

Six Chix, 12/7/18

Fun fact: women absolutely do not wear strapless tube top rompers to yoga, as doing any kind of inversions would lead to embarrassing wardrobe malfunction situations. Also, snowpeople would be much more diligent about ascertaining the temperature of rooms before they enter, as prolonged exposure to heat causes them to die in agony.

Blondie, 12/7/18

“Boy, people seem to like Twitter! I guess they got games on there like they do on Facebook, huh?” –someone who has spent a lot of time playing games on Facebook and has literally never used Twitter once

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Hello all! I am back, rested, and ready from my trip! First off, a huge thanks for everyone who donated to the Fall Fundraiser — I’ll be thanking you all individually soon! And a huge thanks to Uncle Lumpy for entertaining us all while I was travelling, and bringing his buddy Turtle Carl with him!

And, prompted by some gentle suggestions from Uncle Lumpy and a few others, I’ve decided to put a New Year’s resolution into effect a whole month early and add a bunch of new comics into my reading rotation, for my (and hopefully your) comics-mocking amusement! Let’s take a look at how some of these newcomers to my reading list grapple with the big philosophical questions, shall we?

Baby Blues, 12/3/18

Inhabitants of Western civilization are heirs to both the monotheistic Abrahamic religions with their divinely ordained moral codes and the Enlightenment tradition of reasoned, universal ethics. But when push comes to shove, many of us still hew to a much more ancient rule, articulated by Plato as “justice is benefiting one’s friends and harming one’s enemies,” which has an obvious corollary: “stop snitching.” Today’s Baby Blues shows how these varying ethical frameworks intersect, as seen through the lens of discourse about the last universally accepted omniscient being in our secular world (Santa).

Sam and Silo, 12/3/18

The significantly less sophisticated Sam and Silo is just going to try to pretend to have invented Pascal’s Wager.

Dustin, 12/3/18

But at least Sam and Silo is trying to tackle some big ideas! Dustin, meanwhile, is still convinced that “traditional thing + technology term” is comedy gold. Ha ha, it’s funny because Santa determines who’s naughty and who’s nice via … Bluetooth? Like, do his earbuds fail to pair with his computer at random roughly one out of every four attempts and that’s how he monitors our behavior or what, help me out here.

The Pajama Diaries, 12/3/18

Meanwhile, The Pajama Diaries are coming at you with some Hanukkah jokes! It also appears to be compressing a full panoply of Hanukkah gift-giving into a single night. One evening is all the time we can spare for Hanukkah; The Pajama Diaries will be back tomorrow with wholesome gentile content.

Kevin and Kell, 12/3/18

I aslo started reading Kevin and Kell, which appears to be about, uh, furries? Furries who eat each other’s flesh?

Pluggers, 12/3/18

But rest assured, just because I’m reading about hip young cannibal furries, that doesn’t mean I’m casting aside the old favorites, like cranky old lower-middle-class exurban furries. In today’s Pluggers, someone told a plugger he needs to work on developing an inner life, and it’s not going great.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/3/18

Meanwhile, in Funky Winkerbean, Funky’s addled old father is horny! More on this important and no doubt extremely unpleasant story as it develops.