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Mother Goose and Grimm, 6/5/19

Just about every animator and cartoonist eventually dabbles with a “Duck Amuck“-style plot where the characters grapple with the nature of their own reality. Today’s Mother Goose and Grimm is a particularly disturbing take, though, with Mother Goose going bug-eyed with panic as she realizes she’s dissolved her beloved dog’s body into nothingness. Only his eyes remain, hanging in mid-air, leading to an important question: are eyes the soul of a cartoon character? Makes you think!

Shoe, 6/5/19

I’m extremely put off by the way Shoe is making direct eye contact with the reader in the second panel, as if to say, “Get it? I, Shoe, the title character in this comic strip, walk around naked at all times, and maybe you’ve been reading this strip for years and just assumed it’s a weird visual quirk that everyone involved in the strip’s production has long forgotten about, but: nope! I’m naked, other characters in this strip wear clothes, I’m violating every in-universe social norm, but they can’t stop me. Nobody can stop me. It’s now official Shoe canon that I’m a sick pervert bird-man who likes making everyone feel uncomfortable, because that’s how I get off.”

Gasoline Alley, 6/5/19

Please sign my change dot org petition to require that every Gasoline Alley strip end with one of the characters saying “Huh?”, thus assuring the reader that they aren’t meant to really understand anything that anybody is saying.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/5/19

WELP HERE IT IS

BARNEY GOOGLE HAS STUMBLED INTO CAMP SWAMPY

IT’S THE COMICS CROSSOVER EVENT THAT NOBODY WANTED OR ASKED FOR BUT WE’RE GONNA GET IT ANYWAY, BY GOD

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Shoe, 5/3/19

Here’s a question that I genuinely don’t know the answer to, and I ask with no particular malice: do you think Shoe strips like this, which consist entirely of two characters in a well-established Shoe locale talking to each other in vaguely joke-like ways, are drawn to order? Or are there like tons of templates on file where an intern at the Brookins-MacNelly Foundation For Laffs can match up the number of word balloons with the joke assigned for the day and just let ‘er rip? This is, again, not meant to be a criticism of the latter strategy — it’s the only logical and efficient way to approach it, after all. But I’m asking because in today’s trip, there seems to be even less of a connection between the joke and the visuals than usual. In panel two in particular, Roz and her customer are narrowing their eyes and leaning towards each other, almost as if they’re about to launch into a physical fight, which would definitely be more interesting than a “death and taxes” gag.

Dick Tracy, 5/3/19

Anyone who’s ever read a single entry on this blog knows that I can very easily achieve a state of “Oh no, I thought too much about this thing that hate and now I accidentally love it,” and this insanely wordy Minit Mystery is now one of those things. I still refuse to attempt to “solve” the mystery or even get a firm grasp of what the hell is happening, but am I going to lie back and enjoy the sensation of letting this tsunami of backstory wash over me. This plot has it all! Authors Pat Culhane and Austin Black! Suburban slashers! Farm gals who are racist against Italians but marry Italians anyway! Can’t wait to sort of understand whatever happens next!

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Shoe, 4/16/19

Me being me, there’s an awful lot I could complain about here: this strip is clearly set at Roz’s counter, whereas Shoe’s failed romantic advances should by rights happen at Treetops’ fern bar, plus I’m not really sure “tank” works as a synonym for “pool,” particularly one that has variable depth. But I’m totally on board for the “bigger picture” here, which is that journalism in the bird-world of Shoe, as in ours, is in economic freefall, and Shoe has decided to jump ship to take on an advocacy role at some billionaire-funded advocacy organization, using his writing skills to promote [thinks for 30 seconds about what a bird think tank might put out position papers on but then deciding it isn’t really worth it] like, lower taxes on gizzard stones or whatever.

Mary Worth, 4/6/19

“We barely even talk to each other! It’s great!”