Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 10/25/14

Not sure what denomination Chaplain Staneglass is supposed to be, but mainstream Christian theology has had a ready answer to this one since at least Aquinas and probably Augustine. The short version is that God is eternal and exists outside of time as we understand it — indeed, the linear progression of time, including the concept of cause and effect, is part of His creation, so it doesn’t really make sense to talk about Him being created by anyone or anything. You can find this logic varying degrees of satisfying based on your own personal beliefs, but the idea that a clergyman would respond to a sincere question about it with “WELP ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” makes me a little depressed about the quality of ministry available to our soldiers and/or cartoonists, and I’m an atheist.

Six Chix, 10/25/14

You can see this as a cartoon about a dad being a sullen dick about doing a joint Halloween costume with his daughter, but I prefer to interpret it as a clever little girl doing the best she can to work with the requirements of an unusual court order.

Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 10/17/14

So, yeah, it’s been all week and I still haven’t gotten over this “Les bowls Cayla over by writing a comic book about how she rescued him from the pits of despair when his first, more important wife died” plot twist. To make it even better, he’ll be flying her to Hong Kong so they can watch it get spat out of an industrial-sized laser printer at whatever low-bid printing company he picked that will just build a book out of any PDF you send them, which means the whole trip will be blessedly tax deductible. This obviously merits some tongue-kissing, and much as I rag on this strip, I have to say that Summer’s expression of mingled shock and disgust is perfectly rendered. She stands in for all of us.

Six Chix, 10/17/14

You kids today, always taking pictures of each other with your cell phones for the instagrams and so forth! Enjoy your youth now, but know that the icy finger of death is always, always just inches away from your tender skin. That’s … that’s the message in this nationally syndicated cartoon today, I guess?

Pluggers, 10/17/14

Oh, sure, laugh at this plugger dog-man taking his date to a fast food restaurant if you must, but at least he’s moved a step or two up the food chain!

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 10/10/14

Usually Gil is far too disengaged from his job and his student-athletes to live up to any of the usual stereotypes of gym teachers as bullies, but as his cruel smile in panel three indicates, he’s not above indulging in a little sadism if the opportunity falls ready-made into his lap. “That’s right, quarterbacks, duke it out for my love, like bugs in a jar! Oh, does the jar need shaking? COMPETITION IS GOOD! NOW FIGHT! FIGHT!”

Dennis the Menace, 10/10/14

Dennis, unable to truly grasp the concepts of “past” and “future” or the endless cycle of the seasons, lives in an eternal present, refusing to learn anything from anything that happened before or consider that his actions might have effects on what’s coming next. It doesn’t get more menacing than this.

Family Circus, 10/10/14

When the starting premise for your Family Circus cartoon is “Let’s pretend that seven-year-old Billy drew a naked picture of his little brother in the service of an awful sub-pun,” I suppose it’s actually a good thing that the end result looks like a fleshy pink chicken with a human head.

Six Chix, 10/10/14

There’s a lot to dislike here — the crude drawing, the sub-par joke — but I’m going to focus my enmity on the fact that this cartoon ran on a Friday.