Post Content

Shoe, 9/11/21

Spending too much energy thinking about world-building in newspaper comics is probably a waste of time, but [gestures at thousands of posts on this blog] that has certainly never stopped me before, and I feel like today’s Shoe offers us an interesting view into the weird sequence of physical/biological aberrations that led to the strip’s lived environment. Like, they live in the trees, like birds? Only they wear shoes and walk like people? I particularly appreciate the casual way the Perfesser holds onto that branch in panel two, exactly the way a person walking along a rounded log would, and exactly the way a bird hopping along a tree branch (who one would expect to have wings instead of hands, for one thing) wouldn’t. Anyway, I’m not one for biology defining destiny, but surely these mutations are the root cause of these poor birds developing unhealthy societal concepts like “phones” and “the 1970s.”

Mary Worth, 9/11/21

Hey remember when Saul used to be surly jerk who hated everyone and everything until Mary forced him, without his consent, to get in touch with his emotions? Well, it looks like he’s made it his mission to cajole people into doing the emotional work on their own, so they don’t find themselves tricked by Mary into doing it the hard way!

Post Content

Mary Worth, 8/6/21

One of my favorite things in Mary Worth is when we cut away from the main action of the current plot to other characters, commenting cattily on the main action of the current plot. It’s more fun if the characters in the main plot are dipshits who deserve to be made fun of and, guess what, it’s Mary Worth so they almost always are. Dr. Drew is no Wilbur, but he’s dopey enough that I really enjoy Mary’s “They seemed to be very different people,” which if you’ve read enough Mary Worth like I have you immediately recognize as simultaneously one of the most savage and cutting things anybody has ever said but also not something explicit enough that she’s going to have to walk it back like Jeff will when Drew inevitably tracks Ashlee down and theatrically refuses to even consider a prenup.

Shoe, 8/6/21

This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, but I have boundless respect for the fact that the Shoe artistic team finds new ways every day to depict bird-men who are just crushingly depressed. Look at the Perfesser in that second panel! That’s not just a man (a bird-man, I guess) who’s being berated by his boss; that’s a man who’s been berated by his boss over and over again and it’s brought him into a profoundly dark mindset. I sincerely hope the artist is working from a place of boundless empathy for this character, but doesn’t find him too relatable, if you follow me!

Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/5/21

It is truly amazing the way this strip has retconned its Sarah storyline from 2014, in which she made a lucrative book deal with the art museum, in the course of which she did a public event at which another kid was briefly mean to her but mere seconds later she rallied an army of the oppressed to turn the tables on her attackers, and also in an unrelated turn of events befriended a mob boss and acquired a brutal gangland enforcer as her babysitter’s chauffeur. At the time, Sarah seemed to be having a blast, but apparently the syndicate got an angry letter about the impact all this might have on a real child, because now it’s something that Rex and June talk about in hushed tones as the worst thing that ever happened to their daughter, worse than the time she got hit by a car, which erased year of her memory. Anyway, thank goodness we’re recapitulating this now and learning how a child can become a big creative success “the right way”: anonymously, after sending unsolicited fan fiction to their favorite author.

Shoe, 8/5/21

Not sure why, but for the many years I’ve been reading Shoe I’ve always assumed Roz’s was primarily a lunch spot? But the characters seem to be hanging out there more and more after hours, and this is clearly an end-of-the-day gripe session the Perfesser is having. Say, what do you think Skyler, the Perfesser’s nephew and ward, is doing at home while the Perfesser eats dinner after work by himself? What is he, like … ten, eleven? Does he know how to cook, do you think?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/5/21

Snuffy Smith is the only comic in which I will accept a joke about how someone swapped two different kinds of bells as a prank and then everyone has a good hearty chuckle over it. Bells are Hootin’ Holler’s only source of artificial noise of any kind, so of course the inhabitants are going to be able to distinguish the subtle differences between the various types!