Shoe, 1/25/20
I’m having a hard time figuring out if Shoe doing a joke about plagiarism that rips off another widely circulated joke is ironic on purpose or ironic accidentally.
Mark Trail, 1/25/20
OH NO MARK TRAIL IS FINALLY GOING TO LEARN WHAT “SEX” IS
Crock, 1/22/20
One of the dangers of doing a syndicated comic strip for years is that you either subconsciously repeat a joke or just submit a strip you drew years ago hoping your editors won’t notice; and one of the dangers of writing a blog making fun of comic strips for (gulp) 15-plus years is that I’ll see one of these repeats and make more or less the same joke about it that I did long before. Sometimes I miss it, but sometimes as I’m about to hit “publish” a little voice nags at me that it all seems too familiar. So it was today, when I had a joke about how the characters in Crock aren’t in North Africa at all, but rather are parasites who reside on the flesh of some unimaginably huge creature; but then I got that aforementioned nagging feeling, and went walking through my archives, and sure enough, back in 2007, when the creator of the strip was still alive, I made basically this joke about an an entirely different strip that made basically this joke. Anyway! More proof that the Crock characters are all inhabitants of some awful living planet made of meat, or something! This is Crockiverse canon, and you have to think about it every time you read the strip!
Shoe, 1/22/20
Shoe, meanwhile, is relatively “with it” for a long-running legacy strip today: The Wiz is, after all, an expert in all things computers, and it would be unrealistic for him to try to convince Shoe that there’s any viable revenue model for online journalism.
Dustin, 1/22/20
You know, if you’re going to do a strip about a middle-aged character picking up some youth slang, it might behoove you to be really, really sure you know what said youth slang means, since “ghosting” refers not to dropping a text conversation with outstanding matters still unresolved, which is what from context the Dustin clan seems to be talking about here, but rather ending a romantic relationship with someone by wholly and abruptly cutting off communication with them. Granted, what with how the rest of them treat Dustin, it’d be fully believable that he’d finally get fed up and ghost them in the correct sense of the word!
Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/22/20
“Can’t people just die of old age anymore without having to make a big production out if it? I mean, come on.”
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!