Post Content

Six Chix, 2/1/21

OK, fine, I admit it, you don’t do a whole manifesto on your comics blog to the effect of “I’m doing commentary, it’s not like I don’t understand what the joke is supposed to be” unless you’re a little concerned that there are times where you don’t understand what the joke is supposed to be, and, I’ll admit: today’s Six Chix is one of those times. The main joke here is about the “it’s the journey, not the destination” cliche, where the lady is painting a journey, realized in concrete form by her painting a plane full of people on a journey, but … is the joke also that the plane is hanging there in midair indefinitely to have its portrait painted? Or did that aspect of how planes and paintings work not intrude into the creative process of this strip? I’m really getting myself into a lather about how irritated and/or amused I should be here.

Dennis the Menace, 2/1/21

This seems like Alice is passing on a compliment to her son, but in fact, in an indirect way, she’s complimenting herself and her husband, because for once they both managed to refrain from saying anything really cruel and cutting about her old college friend that Dennis could misunderstand and repeat in front of her. Good job, Mitchell parents! Dennis still has a menacingly high level of self-regard, though.

Gasoline Alley, 2/1/21

Oh, I’m sorry, did you read about how Slim and Clovia needed a new dryer back on December 29th and think to yourself, “Surely they’ll have this transaction wrapped up by February”? You fool. You absolute moron. How could you be so naive? You make me sick.

Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 12/24/20

It’s Christmas Eve, everybody! What do you need to make your holiday complete? Is it the return of the storyline about Funky’s senile and sexually aggressive father?

Pardon My Planet, 12/24/20

Is it a vision of Santa and his elves, conducting unspeakable medical experiments on innocent people for no reason you can fathom?

Six Chix, 12/23/20

Wrong! What you need to make your holiday complete is this comic strip about a teddy bear yelling at a little girl that she needs to learn about self-soothing! Simultaneously baffling and repellent, it’s everything we love about this wonderful season. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Post Content

Six Chix, 12/16/20

It was just back in March of this year that there was a Rhymes With Orange strip about dogs pissing on sentient snowmen for which the syndicate colorist bravely held the line and refused to use yellow to highlight the clearly drawn section where the snowman got pissed on. But the last nine months have frankly felt like about a million years, and so now, in December, the colorists have clearly just given up. You wanna do a comic where a snowman tries to bargain with a dog to stop the pissing? Sure, whatever. Let’s make the piss the same color as the sunset, too, just really drive home the melange of beauty and disgust that we’re aiming for. It’s been a year, man, there’s no point in being precious about, well, anything. Also, fun fact, I at first misremembered the Rhymes With Orange strip linked above as a Six Chix strip, so I spent a lot of trime trying to find it in my Six Chix archives using keywords like “urine” and “piss” and “pee” and honestly I got a lot of results, so clearly I am, and always have been, Part Of The Problem.

Beetle Bailey, 12/16/20

No one would ever mistake Lt. Fuzz for a Jacobin; his only ideological orientation is towards his own advancement. But clearly he’s not moving up the ladder in the army’s current structure, so maybe he thinks that so long as he backs the guillotining of a few aristocrats he’ll have better luck with the French Revolutionary practice of officers being elected by their soldiers (he won’t).

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/16/20

CALLING IT NOW: Buck has come down with just a touch of the ol’ diabeetus! In normal times, newspaper readers can handle exciting medical things happening to Buck, like him getting shot in the head with a nail gun. But in the midst of a global pandemic, and especially with Wilford Brimley’s tragic passing this year, we need the comfort of a diabeetus storyline, to anchor us emotionally.

Dennis the Menace, 12/16/20

“My goodness and badness exist in superposition in the same physical space, in defiance of the laws of physics! My mother cringes away from me whenever I approach in horror at the ontological whirlpool of virtue and vice that I have become!”

Hi and Lois, 12/16/20

Is someone laughing? Fooling around? Having fun? Well they won’t anymore, not after Lois gets to the bottom of this!