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Shoe, 7/23/16

The absolute best part of today’s Shoe is how damn happy Shoe’s interlocutor looks here. “Fastest-moving parade I’ve ever seen,” Dexter says. “Because we all had to shit!” He beams. “Basically we ran through that parade route. Because we had to get to the end quickly, because otherwise we would’ve pooped our pants.” He’s overwhelmed with a sense of nostalgia for the day. “We had eaten all these prunes, you see. Prunes make you have to go to the bathroom. So all of us in the parade really had to take a dump. That’s why it went so fast!”

Mary Worth, 7/23/16

I’d be pretty happy if we just spent, like, a whole ’nother week on Tommy just lying around in bed enjoying the groovy feelings that Vicodin put into his body. I mean, just look at how happy he is! Don’t you want Tommy to be happy? Look at him gazing lovingly at the pill bottle in panel two as he sweats out the toxins! He doesn’t need to take more pills right now! He’s not a fiend. He just likes to know that they’re there. The bottle is comforting to look at. Ahhhhh! Sweet sweet Vicodin.

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Hagar the Horrible, 7/22/16

One fun thing about strips set in the past is to see which aspects of the strip’s world are kept accurate and which are allowed to drift into anachronisms. For instance, for this joke we have to understand that, unlike actual 10th century Norway, Hagar’s milieu includes hotels, honeymoons, room service, and brochures. But at least it doesn’t include file cabinets. Thank god. That would’ve been a bridge too far! No, Hagar and Helga just keep their treasured memories in an actual treasure chest, the way real Vikings did.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/22/16

Haha, remember earlier this week when I mentioned how hard it is for readers to reconcile the new-style Funkyverse gloom with old-style wacky hijinks? Well, I guess it was hard for the author, too! Anyway, beloved Funky Winkerbean character Darin, biological son to tragically dead Lisa, is now himself tragically dead, shot through the heart in front of his best friend by a scared, angry sailor in the midst of wacky hijinks/attempted piracy. He is survived by his loving wife, who lost her father to an act of violence years ago, and his infant son. He will be missed.

Mother Goose and Grimm and Shoe, 7/22/16

Here’s a couple syndicated newspaper comics about old, wizened dudes defiantly and somewhat derangedly sneering at their looming, inevitable death, in what is definitely not a metaphor for the medium as a whole at all, no sir!

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Mark Trail, 7/2/16

So our mysterious circa 2014 sea-tourists have decamped to a deserted island, to make out! Hat Lady’s pouty face in panel one looks hilariously sarcastic to me? [fake baby voice] “Aww, I’m so sorry something bit your tender skin, little boy. NOW GET OVER HERE AND KISS ME LIKE A MAN WOULD KISS ME.” Presumably when Mark stumbles onto this island two years from now, these two will have fully mutated into ant-people.

Shoe, 7/2/16

A fun thing to do when you encounter an obvious euphemism for “had sex,” like “been romantic” in panel one here, is to contemplate whether an editor demanded the change or if the writer knew it had to be toned down for the “funny pages.” I for one yearn for the days when a bird-man wearing saddle shoes and what appear to be purple leg warmers but no pants can have a frank, honest, and open discussion about his sex life in the newspaper.