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Blondie, 8/18/14

Blondie has always been cheerfully hostile towards contemporary pop culture and/or modernity, so it’s pretty impressive that the strip has actually managed to find a musical reference here that isn’t dated or just completely wrong-headed. If it’s being deployed in the context of Elmo aggressively demanding that Dagwood forge an affectionate note from a wildly popular 24-year-old songstress for his own inscrutable and no doubt sinister purposes, so much the better.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/18/14

So the whole point last week’s noir-ish reverie, at the end of which someone got killed, was to remind Les of the existence of his “kill fee.” In the normal world that humans inhabit, a kill fee is what a writer gets from a publication when they fulfill the obligations of their contract but then the publication decides, for whatever reason, not to publish what they’ve written; it’s less (usually substantially yet) than what they were originally promised for the article, but the writer keeps all rights to their work and can try to sell it to someone else. But in the cutthroat world of Hollywood screenwriting in the Funkyverse, it apparently refers to a fee a writer gets when he decides he hates working on movies and just up and quits, even though he’s already gotten a big check for his script, which sounds pretty neat. Looks like I made the right choice to go west and try to make my own way in the entertainment industry!

Pluggers, 8/18/14

A physically active plugger expressing unbridled and even manic joy rather than down-home smugness or vague unease with modern life? A plugger’s all-wheel-drive that doesn’t refer to a proudly retrograde smoke-belching motor vehicle of some kind? What the hell is this even? Was someone just really, really eager to draw a bear wearing roller skates and a helmet? Not that I can blame them, it’s a pretty rad thing to draw.

Six Chix, 8/18/14

While I’m not familiar with the specifics, I’m sure there are any number of belief systems in which the sea is regarded as a single, feminine entity. Over the millennia, she’s drawn tens of thousands of sailors to their doom in her watery bosom, so the idea that she might be constantly murmuring their final terrified blasphemies seems reasonable as well.

Spider-Man, 8/18/14

I swear I’m not just saying this over bitterness over my own botched attempt to get an academic PhD, honest: I find it really pretentious when people who have non-medical doctorates go around calling themselves “doctor.” Maybe Doc Ock wanted to call himself “Professor Octopus” but then he got an angry letter from the provost reminding him that he was only an adjunct lecturer.

Momma, 8/18/14

Hello, ladies! Have you ever left the house or had interactions or experiences of any kind? Well, Momma is sorry to hear you’re such a whore.

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Crankshaft, 8/8/14

Good news, everybody! Despite the grim foreboding, this week’s Crankshaft food truck storyline has ended with smiles all around. Weird, blissed out smiles from everyone emerging from a fenced off zone in which the fully tricked out food trucks, each of which contains expensive kitchen equipment and represents somebody’s entire small business, rammed into each other repeatedly for the crowd’s amusement, until only one was still (barely) functional. “Pure carnage,” says Crankshaft, as if that were a … joke, or bit of wordplay, or something? Maybe one of the trucks was full of meat, meat that could have fed dozens of happy customers, meat that instead was ground into the muddy, oily earth. Or maybe just lots of drivers died in the conflagration. Who knows? Everyone sure seems happy, though!

Shoe, 8/8/14

Man, for someone who literally reads the comics every day for a living, there sure is some stuff I don’t pick up on. When I read today’s Shoe, for instance, I immediately thought, “Hey, how long has Shoe’s desk just been an overturned trashcan? Is that some commentary on the poor financial state of print newspapers?” Well, jokes on me, because Shoe’s trashcan-desk has been around for at least seven years. And really, how badly can the The Treetops Tattler-Tribune be doing, considering it operates in a market where people still call into the newspaper to find out what the weather is going to be like?

Six Chix, 8/8/14

Well, I guess you could have asked! Or maybe going to a restaurant so dedicated to meat consumption that they trot out live cows to your table is something noteworthy enough to be brought up in advance, I dunno. Certainly if your relationship has advanced to the point where you’re basically sitting in each other’s lap at dinner, you’d think the topic of dietary preferences would’ve come up.

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Beetle Bailey, 8/5/14

I went through a lot of emotional stages with this comic. First I was like, “Wow, Cookie has definitely been drawn by someone who holds the idea of tattoos in contempt but who has not actually seen a lot of tattoos.” Then I thought, “Wait, Jesus Christ, is Cookie naked underneath his apron? Are they having Cookie strut around nude in the mess hall, for no other reason than to make this stupid tattoo joke?” Then I noticed, “no, they’re in the barracks, which means that Cookie walks around with his apron and chef’s hat on while otherwise nude in the barracks, which is almost as weird if not weirder.” Anyway. The “cut here” tattoo? Pretty “edgy,” right? Eh? Eh? Kids today? And also it should probably be visible when he has his clothes on? Eh?

Judger Parker, 8/5/14

Aww, you guys, Sam’s longtime legal secretary Gloria is finally marrying the double amputee of her dreams! Of course, Sam isn’t just her boss — he’s her best friend, the person she’s closest to in the world, and she loves him! Sam’s frozen little smile in panel three is one of the best things I’ve ever seen. “Yes and you … are definitely someone I’ve worked with for … several years, the precise number of which I will have to look up, Gloria!”

Six Chix, 8/5/14

Wouldn’t most cow gossip revolve around who’s been killed and eaten lately? Maybe let’s talk about something more pleasant.