Post Content

Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/12/22

Whoops, I was going to do a whole bit about how this bulldog straight-up murdered someone in prison “the kennel,” but it turns out that teardrop tattoos are polysemous, with as many meanings as there are people who get them. So instead I’ll just say that I really admire the 3D, photorealistic work on this one, much better than you usually see in from tattoos people get while incarcerated, and even more impressive when you realize that the artist probably didn’t have thumbs.

Six Chix, 10/12/22

Look, if you had told me when I first launched this blog that I would be spending a lot of time contemplating the romantic and reproductive lives of mermaids, I might’ve taken a different path in life, but I’m here now and have to make the best of it. Anyway, we now know that, in the early stage of their lifecycle, mer-people have a fish upper half and mammalian lower half, which is really quite a fascinating discovery! Also, as with fish, it seems that the sperm and egg meet and fertilize outside the body, meaning that the young must be retrieved and delivered to the mother by a stork (a species that coexists with mermaids in some kind of symbiotic relationship) in order to be properly raised. (On the other hand, it’s possible that this baby is a reversed generic abomination that the mother tried unsuccessfully to toss into the sea, and this stork is just confronting her with her responsibilities.)

Pluggers, 10/12/22

Ha ha! It’s funny because pluggers are in pain, all the time!

Post Content

Six Chix, 10/10/22

Man, it’s been a while since there’s been a Six Chix with so many specific inexplicable details as this one, and I feel like we need to kick off the week by celebrating it! “Back to the land” generally refers to a movement in the ’60s and ’70s where people rejected modern industrial society and moved to rural areas to live in ways they hoped would be more self-sufficient and connected to the earth. What does this have to do with robots? Why is the back to the land robot carrying a bindle, like it’s a hobo or a child pretending to run away from home in a old-timey comic? Why doesn’t the back to the land robot have legs? Is it significant that the other robot is plugged into the wall? Why is now a particularly panic-inducing time for this trip back to the land to happen? Is the plugged-in robot flailing his arms around in panic like the Lost In Space robot, or is he finger quoting around “back to the land”? Feel free to wildly speculate about the answers to all these questions in the comments, but I assure you that you will never figure it out.

Gil Thorp, 10/10/22

Milford’s new trans student Tobias is also the newest Mudlark, recruited as a kicker after Gil saw him playing soccer. This is big news! The traditionalist Gil Thorp readership needs to be introduced to the idea in the most Gil Thorp way possible: by having him pull off an deranged trickeration play (a rainbow kick, to be clear, is a soccer move) that we only have described to us while two other characters that we’ve never seen before look at the off-panel action. Why is mohawk dude telling Guy “you gotta see this” when Guy is clearly looking directly at the football field, just like mohawk dude is? Did Guy close his eyes so he didn’t have to see the woke hellscape? This too is classic Gil Thorp, and I appreciate it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/10/22

Oh yeah, in Rex Morgan, Hank Jr. and his long-distance girlfriend got married! It all happened off-panel, but don’t worry, they’re here to assure you that it wasn’t very interesting and you didn’t miss anything.

Dennis the Menace, 10/10/22

Ugh, it’s called athleisure, Dennis, look it up. I guess it’s kind of menacing for an eight-year-old to sound like a furious senior citizen writing a rejected letter to the editor about how women today dress like whores in public, but maybe not in the same spirit of menacing as the strip title intends.

Post Content

Sam and Silo, 9/9/22

In their book Engineering Happiness, economists Rakesh Sarin and Manel Baucells define the “fundamental question” of wellbeing as Happiness = Reality – Expectations. Here, Sam and Silo illustrate the special case when you can’t do the math.

Six Chix, 9/9/22

This strip about a mess is the tidiest artwork we’ve seen in Six Chix all week.

Dick Tracy, 9/9/22

Dick Tracy babies enter the world under a cloud of schtick. “Attitude” here was named for Eddie Tude, a rando pizza delivery driver who drove mom Gertie to the maternity hospital in 2011. We’re informed he (Attitude) is ugly, but never see his face. He has an owl pet/mimic/familiar. He throws things at his dad B.O., though without enough force to actually kill the annoying old coot. He is a disappointment to Dick Tracy fans in every possible way.

Sally Forth, 9/9/22

Sally, you’re in H.R. You’ll be plenty busy once the restructuring gets rolling, followed by plenty of time off.

Well, time to pack things up around here and wipe the bourbon off the console for Josh’s triumphant return. Thanks for a delightful time!

–Uncle Lumpy