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Shoe, 9/10/23

I don’t play poker so I don’t know if it’s normal for three friends to be randomly assigned a total stranger as a fourth player for a game in a casino or card room or grim basement illuminated by a single lightbulb where you’re playing on a giant wire spool instead of a table. I do know that if in mid-game, that guy started, in the typical manner of his species, grunting out “Hey, who wants to fuck, huh? Who wants to fuck me. Who’s horny. I’m horny. I’m hornt up”, I for one would find it quite off-putting.

Gasoline Alley, 9/10/23

Speaking of off-putting, I can decide which possibility I find weirder: that we’re expected to believe that random people in the Gasoline Alley universe send letters looking for advice to Joel, a weird old man who does not have a newspaper column or blog or any other public venue in which to answer them, or that we’re expected to believe that people in the real world send letters looking advice to the creators of Gasoline Alley so that they can be answered in character by Joel in a Sunday strip. For the record, I don’t believe either of these things! I simply refuse to! I believe in a world that makes sense, damn it!

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Mary Worth, 9/4/23

Folks! Mary Worth is taking a moment off from her tale of old people engaging in state-sanction monogamy in order to acknowledge that Hot Labor Summer is here and she is all in favor of it. Whether you’re a Hollywood celeb member of SAG-AFTRA or a hotel maid organized by Unite Here, Mary is happy to come to your picket line with delicious muffins, bottled water, and personal-sized bottles of sunscreen.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/4/23

Snuffy Smith, on the other hand? Snuffy absolutely supplements his chicken-stealing and moonshining revenue by occasionally signing up with the Pinkertons to help crack some skulls if the miners in the next holler over get a little too big for their britches.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/4/23

Rex Morgan, meanwhile, is focusing on the complex modern-day economy that complicates the traditional division between labor and capital and leaves various independent contractors and entrepreneurs entangled in their attempts to extract ongoing revenues from intellectual property. I’m kind of sad that we never got to see the conversation between Mud and Buzzy Cameron where Buzzy explains that they need to set up a trust account for Rene’s rightful share of his music revenues, in case the court decides to award it to his many victims or whatever.

Shoe, 9/4/23

What’s the age cutoff for a heterosexual woman who unselfconsciously refers to a platonic female friend as a “girlfriend”? 40? 50? Anyway, it’s too bad nobody younger than whatever age that is reads newspaper comics, because they might be briefly intrigued, though ultimately disappointed, by the idea that Shoe is about a pansexual bird polycule.

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“Hello kids, and welcome back to World of Animals—I’m your beloved host, Carl. My goodness, it has been such a long time; let’s dig right in to those fascinating Nature Facts from the wonderful World of Animals!”

Speed Bump, 8/6/23

“Say, do you ever feel taken for granted? Well, then, you just might be a turtle!“

Mark Trail (panel), 8/13/23

“See what I mean? Ahem! Did you know that the Ohio River also supports snapping, spotted, painted, northern and Ouachita map, river cooter, pond slider, smooth and spiny softshell, eastern musk, Blanding’s, and box turtles? And that it wouldn’t kill you to mention a few of them?”

Shoe, 8/13/23

“Did you know that birds have vasa deferentia? It’s true!” “It’s still a bad idea to get your avian reproductive facts from Shoe, though; just sayin’.”

Arctic Circle, 8/13/23

“Did you know that squid eat mackerel? It’s true!” “Did you also know that penguins don’t eat mackerel but do eat squid? It’s true—these guys are just waiting.”

Mary Worth (panels), 8/13/23

“If Mary Worth has taught me anything, it’s that dogs are good, but fish are delicious!” “Hey you guys, how about a to-go box for your old pal Carl?”

That’s all for today—time to get outside and explore the wonderful World of Animals!

— Turtle Carl