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Shoe, 1/18/16

Last week I was on the I Haven’t Seen That podcast, a very funny and exciting podcast hosted by Whitney Reynolds and Mark Popham, and we talked newspaper comics, among other things, and it was interesting to see what people do and don’t pick up from the comics. For instance, Mark claimed that, despite reading Shoe regularly, he never realized that its damned bird-men characters work at a newspaper! But they do, and that newspaper apparently runs restaurant reviews, which is curious because the only places where we ever see the bird-people eating out are Roz’s, the sad ’70s fern bar, and I think maybe a fancy white-cloth restaurant with a snooty French waiter? Anyway, there’s three of them, tops, so I assume that each one is reviewed about once a month or so, which the Perfesser’s look of crushing ennui confirms. “Ugggh, what to write about Roz’s this time … old people? Old drunk people? A review for old drunk people? Sounds about right.”

Mary Worth, 1/18/16

You’d think a “professional bakery kitchen” would sound pretty dull even to a known square like Olive, but the alternative seems to be putting together a completely white jigsaw puzzle with Mary while enjoying cookies and water, so you can see why she’s jumping at the opportunity.

Heathcliff, 1/18/16

This is a joke about how Heathcliff and his girlfriend are going to engage in some pharmaceutically-enhanced fucking right here on this couple’s lawn! They brought props, to taunt them with! Let’s hear it for Heathcliff, and for newspaper features editors who just don’t care anymore!

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Hi and Lois, 1/9/15

“Heh heh, if there’s one thing dudes like, it’s football, and the NFL playoffs, am I right? And if there’s one thing ladies like, it’s shopping, using credit cards. You can use credit cards in two stores a day, right? I’m pretty sure that’s how credit cards work? I tried to look it up online but there was all sorts of complicated stuff about interest rates and interchange fees and whatnot? It was confusing. The NFL playoffs are at least blessedly simple. I mean, they’re not, I don’t really understand how the teams are seeded, but there are definitely two games today and two games tomorrow. I’m just hoping credit cards work on the same principles.”

Shoe, 1/9/15

Ha ha, it’s funny because he feels that the coercive and violent power of the state with which he’s been imbued applies in his domestic sphere as well, and believes, probably with some justification, that his fellow law enforcement officers will look the other way when he threatens his wife! Never have the patented Shoe Goggle Eyes of Horror been so appropriate.

Family Circus, 1/9/15

Just to make this joke absolutely clear: Dolly, a child of the electronic age, views any instance of a machine not working as a symptom of it “needing new batteries.” (Actually, an real child Dolly’s age would probably say it “needs to be recharged,” but I digress.) So in other words, that toilet isn’t working correctly. And since the only thing a toilet does is flush, we can assume that in this case, it failed to flush properly. There’s pee or, more likely, poop in that toilet right now, is what I’m saying. Just a big old Keane turd, which Dolly is clenching her fists and backing away from. GO AHEAD, GRANDMAS EVERYWHERE, HANG THIS DISGUSTING SCAT PORN ON YOUR REFRIGERATOR. I DARE YOU.

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My novel, The Enthusiast, is available for purchase! Check out the first chapter, then buy:

• The hardcover or softcover edition for $25 or $15
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• And if the mood strikes, you can put some money in my tip jar

Order soon to get yours in time for Christmas. Thank you very much!

Gil Thorp, 12/17/15

Oh man, the ending of this Gil Thorp storyline is probably one of the most disappointing in recent memory, and that’s saying something! Basically Gil yelled at Holly for making the kids feel bad and Holly closed down the production and sent all the reality show people home. It was both anticlimactic and unrealistic, in that whatever line Holly crossed didn’t seem that much worse than all the other lines she crossed, and and also in that Holly seemed to think that she would be able to work in her industry again after essentially shutting down an entire TV show — which, let’s not forget, was already being broadcast and so probably had several more episodes paid for, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. But anyway, actresses, a bunch of liars, amiright? That’s what the TV executives scrambling to fill the hole Welcome Back Carter left in their schedules are thinking, anyway.

Shoe, 12/17/15

The Patented Shoe Heavy Eyelids of Ennui have never been more heartbreaking than they are here. This comic just consists of a television set delivering a joke that people have been telling each other and not laughing at for years, and the Perfesser wants no part of it. He refuses entirely to participate in it. You can see that between panels one and two his wings have slipped off the chair’s armrests and he’s slouched even further down into the cushions. “This is what it’s come to?” he asks us, silently. “No. No more. I want to die.”

B.C., 12/17/15

Hey, kids! Remember Rage Comics, which were popular on 4chan and Reddit around, like, 2009-ish? Well, one of the Rage Comics characters is in a newspaper comic strip! This certainly means, uh, something about something, that’s for sure.