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Shoe, 1/5/20

I’m not sure what, exactly, this strip implies about the world in which Shoe takes place. Do the characters live in a parallel bird-dimension whose history echoes ours in many ways, with bird-Nixon and bird-Coolidge occupying at various points in the 20th century this universe’s equivalent of the White House, which I assume is perched precariously in a tree? Or are we meant to understand that the birds have been watching us for decades, with intellects intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, noting the coming and going of our human leaders, waiting for the right time to strike, to wipe us all out and take our comfy sweaters for their own?

The Phantom, 1/5/20

“See, Heloise, our line of shadowy puppetmasters, who kept native people under their sway via manipulation and fear, and who meticulously maintained their pure European bloodline despite living in Africa for centuries, were actually anti-colonialists. We’re the good guys!”

“Hmm, so why is it that European powers managed to colonize Africa anyway? Did our ancestors collab–”

“DON’T DECIDE YET, HELOISE, LET’S MOVE ON”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/5/20

Ha ha, it’s Aunt Hildy, June’s meddling, troublesome distant relative! What mischief is she getting into today? Why she’s … keeping the kids busy while Rex and June sleep in and helping make breakfast for everyone? Wow, can’t wait to see what kooky antics she gets into next!

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Shoe, 12/15/19

Ha ha, you know what’s a novel part of modern life? A “drive-thru” window, assuming you consider the 1970s and ’80s, when drive-thru windows became omnipresent on fast food restaurants, to be recent enough that someone might find their existence noteworthy! Anyway, what today’s Shoe asks you to imagine is this: what if there were a mortuary that had a “drive-thru drop-off window,” and while drive-thru windows are usually a means by which you can access an establishment’s goods or services without leaving your car (something already available to funeral customers), the implication of “drive-thru drop-off” seems to be that you’d drive up to the mortuary with a corpse in your car, and just heave it out your window and into the funeral home, then drive off, presumably to have your car’s upholstery cleaned, because of the dead body smell. Pretty funny, huh? Yes, this is definitely the juxtaposition of two discordant ideas for comical effect!

Panel from The Lockhorns, 12/15/19

One would assume that whatever gelatinous off-green mass is on everyone’s plates here is the evening’s main course, so it’s honestly weird that Leroy is only now pulling out this even more inscrutable selection of appetizers. Presumably their preparation was terribly botched even by Loretta’s standards and the decision was not to serve them, but then Leroy fished them out of the trash and stashed them at the ready on the off chance that a wordplay opportunity like this would present itself. Dinner with these two must truly be among the most tiresome things anyone could imagine.

Marvin, 12/15/19

I revisit the concept of comic book time, in which characters always exist in more or less the current calendar year but never age, a lot on this site, but today’s Marvin in some ways reverses it. Usually I imagine characters like Hi and Lois’s Trixie frozen in time, aware of their eternal infancy but unable to break out of it. But today we learn that for Jenny, Marvin’s birth wasn’t that long ago, and her pre-motherhood life is still recent enough that she can catch up with an old friend from those days without much oddness or awkwardness. Sure, he’s a terrible baby who brought her to tears, but she’s confident that will pass, as he naturally moves on to other stages of life, learning to speak, read, and, of course, use a toilet. Meanwhile, in real life, I’m the one who’s trapped. I’m the one who’s been making jokes about Marvin shitting himself for nearly thirteen years now. The characters in these strips are just scribbles on paper, and the prison of the comics is a prison for me and me alone.

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Hi and Lois, 11/25/19

The fact that Lois’s dark shadow looms menacingly in panel two here really makes this comic. Some girls liked the beard, some didn’t. Some told Hi in no uncertain terms that the beard was forbidden, that even a hint of it had to be shorn off the moment it appeared, and that they would be watching, always watching, to make sure he would do as he was told. Now, some boys might not like that sort of arrangement, but as the bedroom eyes Hi is flashing at his wife’s silhouette clearly indicate, Hi is not one of those boys.

Shoe, 11/25/19

The Treetops Tattler, like many local papers, has a small staff that does double and triple duty, and it’s not unheard of to see them dedicating some column inches to arts coverage. Usually it’s the Perfesser who writes the reviews, though clearly that’s a conflict of interest here; it’s a little strange to see the editor in chief take on the role, but I guess he couldn’t pass up the chance to slam on his only full-time employee in a public forum.

Mary Worth, 11/25/19

Man, I barely have time for Mary still somehow being on Team Wilbur or for the delicious shade dished out by our narration box, because I think I now can’t avoid the conclusion that many of you commenters reached months ago: Iris is tired all the time not but because she and Zak are fucking all the time, but because she’s pregnant (which, to be clear, is still a result of the fucking, but it’s a second-order effect). The important question this raises: how will Wilbur react? Will this finally end his fixation on Iris, or will it send him even further into the deep end?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/25/19

I always had Snuffy pegged as a cynic, but it seems he still has a shred of idealism left — the belief that anyone, no matter how humble their circumstances, is entitled to the full protection of America’s laws and can seek redress in the courts if their rights are violated. But Sheriff Tait, the only representative of that distant government, quickly disabuses him of that notion: Snuffy is stuck here in Hootin’ Holler, in more ways than one.