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Dick Tracy, 11/24/21

It really tickles me to think that the various deformed criminals of Dick Tracy have their own fairly normal lives, from which they are occasionally called away in order to do bizarre crimes. Poor Mumbles was a date! He was having a great time with a nice girl! Now he’s gotta follow up on something some other guy screwed up? It’s not right! He doesn’t even get a gimp mask to conceal his identity!

Mary Worth, 11/24/21

Oh, man, Mary’s heavy-lidded expression in panel two as she contemplates who she can foist Wilbur onto is truly chilling. “Hmm, who do I know who completely hates themselves, who just has literally zero self-esteem, who’ll look at Wilbur and say ‘Yes! This is what I want. This is what deserve.’”

Shoe, 11/24/21

“Ha ha, get it? But seriously, Cate Blanchette murdered Elijah Wood, it’s real messed up actually.”

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Shoe, 10/31/21

This is clearly a Macbeth-themed restaurant, but the Perfesser does a Hamlet joke when he orders and isn’t just immediately ejected onto the street? Why did we even teach these birds English if they won’t commit to the bit?

Mary Worth, 10/31/21

Yes, yes, this is good, the absolute 100% funniest possible way for Wilbur to tell Estelle he still has feelings for her is for him to blurt out “Ugh, I tried to have sex with some other lady but she wouldn’t because my dumb brain won’t let me forget about you, why are you still ruining my life” just before he leaves her apartment.

Dennis the Menace, 10/31/21

“My costume is better because all I have to do to make it real is die.”

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The Lockhorns, 10/20/21

If you’re reading this blog, I assume you’ve dedicated at least a little bit of your brain space to the question of why Leroy and Loretta, who demonstrably do not love each other, or like each other, or derive any pleasure from each other’s company, continue to stay married in this era of relatively easy-to-obtain no-fault divorce. They have no children that they’re staying together for, Loretta’s mother hates Leroy, Leroy has no family to speak of, they don’t seem to have any social circle that would be disrupted by a separation, so what are we missing? Presumably the depth of their dysfunction is so great that that they feel psychologically bound to one another, each of them profoundly unhappy but also unable to conceive of life without the other and the pain they receive and dish out by turns. Today, we see a key part of this dynamic: each Lockhorn must occasionally offer the other the free choice to leave or stay, the opportunity to head out the door and never return. Or to come back, if they want, and walk into the future together, hand in unlovable hand.

Mary Worth, 10/20/21

I’m extremely unsettled by the frankly erotic way that Wilbur is eyeing the discolored piece of meat (?) at the end of his fork in panel two. Wilbur can’t deal with salsa dancing, and we all know why, but if there are limits to his digestive system’s ability to process garbage, he hasn’t found them yet.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/20/21

It’s genuinely weird that Mason’s Lisa’s Story production had a wrap party but not even an extremely modest premiere party for the cast and crew, and even weirder that Les and Cayla didn’t even get a copy of the movie to watch. It’s also pretty weird that the Valentine Theater simultaneously was on the verge of failure in 2017 when Max was in his late 30s and then subsequently closed in 2021 when Max was in his late 20s, but let’s not dwell on Funkyverse chronology and think instead about how Les casually adds “or something” at the end of his last sentence here while cringing away from Cayla, as if he doesn’t know exactly where this strip club is and what its hours are. Now, a lot of Funkyverse characters would go to this strip club and talk loudly while getting a lap dance about how you used to be able to see classic serials like Radio Ranch there, but Les I’m sure approaches things with more dignity (he sits silently and contemplates the fact that the Valentine failed and took its owners’ dreams with it, just like everything else good in the world, because that’s what sex is, to him).

Shoe, 10/20/21

In the world of Shoe, birds hold down various human-style jobs, like publishing a newspaper, running a diner, working in a mortuary, running a dating service, and so on. Today we learn that fish in this universe have jobs too, or at least one job: to go to a lake and get murdered.