Post Content

Mary Worth, 6/6/17

I was going to make some snide comment about how mariachi music is from Jalisco, on Mexico’s Pacific coast, and totally out of place here in the Yucatan, but heck, you can hire a mariachi band for your wedding in Tulum! You can hire a jug band in Staten Island! Cultures are becoming more and more homogenous as people become more mobile, and as global elite tourism demands to be catered to by specific forms of cultural output! Mary and Toby had better get deeply margarita-drunk while wearing sombreros by the end of this storyline, is what I’m trying to say. Meanwhile, it’s sad that Haiti’s rich cultural heritage has was ignored last month in favor of their unfortunate history of accidental bathroom imprisonment.

Beetle Bailey, 6/6/17

What with the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the idea that two men in the military might be involved in a secret S&M relationship no longer holds a transgressive thrill. That’s why Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC has moved on to “jell-offing,” a sexual fetish where someone can only achieve orgasm if his or her genitals are nestled in a slowly curdling blob of delicious JELL-O® brand pudding.

Blondie, 6/6/17

It’s pretty sad that Blondie had to hire top-notch Web designers and food photographers to create an elaborate website like this for her catering business. Taking photos of each and every single dish she offers definitely has diminishing returns as advertising, but I guess it makes her feel better to know that, if Dagwood’s going to spend his time at work masturbating to food pornography, at least he’s masturbating to her food pornography.

Crock, 6/6/17

It’s kind of odd that Otis, who is one of the more frequently used members of Crock’s cast of characters, has been reduced to a tiny, glowering, wordless gnome-thing in this strip. But I guess it’s also odd that he had “Show and Tell” at school and didn’t bring in his best friend, a talking bird who feasts on the rotting flesh of the dead.

Shoe, 6/6/17

nggnnngghghggngn

THERE IS NO HALL

YOU’RE IN A SINGLE ROOM INSIDE A TREE TRUNK

WHY DON’T YOU SAY “DOWN THE BRANCH” OR SOMETHING

JUST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THEY’RE BIRDS LIVING FULL-TIME IN TREES FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE

GOD DAMN IT

Post Content

Spider-Man, 5/26/17

I’m not usually in the business of determining when things are racist or not, but I have to deem giving a black cop the line “Mole man or soul man” at least somewhat … questionable. But fortunately the strip quickly pivots away from race to class, as we learn that the police, far from being impartial arbiters of the law, are at the beck and call of the elite: these officers, against their better judgement, apparently have no choice but to set this violent, stick-weilding maniac free at the whim of some rich movie star.

Six Chix, 5/26/17

I actually kind of love that this cartoon is set in some boring white-collar office. They’re not spies or government agents or anything like that, just ordinary people driven to paranoid insanity by the realities of modern life.

Shoe, 5/26/17

“Plus, I’m a bird! I don’t have any hair to speak of! Now just trim my plumage like I asked.”

Family Circus, 5/26/17

Haha, it’s funny because Dolly doesn’t fully understand her own anatomy! Yes, that’s definitely what’s going on here. Surely “Dolly” isn’t a swarm of alien insects, testing the tensile limits of the human flesh-suit they’re using to infiltrate our society. That would be repulsive, and horrifying.

Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/17/17

The last however many seemingly interminable days of Rex Morgan, M.D., have involved Kelly agreeing to take on extra after-school childcare duties at the Morgans so that June can go back to work at the clinic, with June talking a lot about finding a “balance” between family and professional life. Today’s strip is intriguing because it reveals the truth about the balance that upper-class families seek: that it is purchased at the expense of working-class people who need the money badly enough that they neglect their own personal lives so that the wealthy can enjoy a well-rounded existence. This radical political message is however a little undercut by the fact that we’re talking about Kelly, a high schooler who mainly wants to spend more time with her boyfriend on her off hours so she doesn’t have to give him surreptitious handjobs while she’s supposed to be babysitting. But, I would argue, if June deserves both professional fulfillment and a two-child family, then so too do Kelly and Niki deserve the full range of teen fooling around that their social betters take as a given.

Shoe, 5/17/17

Say, have you ever had the experience of seeing a comely tattooed young woman in a tight, short skirt, and you can’t stop seething about how the decline in America’s morals means that supposedly respectable girls go around dressed like prostitutes these days but also can’t stop visualizing her every time you close your eyes? Well, good news: if you have a comic strip that sometimes features erotically drawn bird-women, you can work your problems out … through your art.

The Lockhorns, 5/17/17

Wait wait wait, are Leroy and Loretta supposed to be … younger than me? Welp, time to die