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So today a lot of comics artists have inserted some symbols into their strips to pay tribute to essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic. And, naturally, there was a range of approaches to this!

Dustin, 6/7/20

You could, for instance, take the Dustin route, where the symbols are explicitly explained in text, and then used in the comic itself to further the cause of recognizing various heroes, sung and unsung!

Baby Blues, 6/7/20

Or you could take the Baby Blues technique, which is to integrate the symbols naturalistically into the comic itself, on the assumption that readers will pick up news stories about this campaign and understand what they’re looking at.

Six Chix, 6/7/20

Or — hear me out — you could do it the Six Chix way, by which I of course mean the most half-assed way imaginable, wedging symbols into a joke that’s already terrible by itself so as to make them fully incomprehensible. What’s the most insultingly placed of the icons here? Lotta people are gonna say the steering wheel at the bottom left corner, held by disembodied human hands, but don’t sleep on the picture (?) of the microscope that the pigeon is wearing (?) on its chest.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/7/20

Funky Winkerbean, of course, can not accomodate any misery that is not Funky Winkerbean, so it will not be acknowledging the coronavirus pandemic nor any of the essential workers ameliorating it, but I did enjoy today’s strip, in which Cayla desperately begs Mason not to try to get inside the mind of a madman, it’s too late for her, but he can still save himself, there’s still time, there’s still time.

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Slylock Fox, 4/27/20

OK, fine, you know what, “throwing ice cubes at a parade” is an extremely low-grade crime, so I can understand why Slylock did not feel like he needed to personally follow up on the tip they got from a busybody rabbit neighbor or whatever, but: the suspect’s still a wolf, you know? A wolf who could eat Max in one very efficient bite, should he, say, catch the poor sidekick rodent attempting to open a refrigerator door that weighs easily 20 to 30 times more than he does. And yeah, I guess he’s a wolf who’s idea of sinister behavior is throwing ice cubes at a parade, but he’s also a wolf with a visible ham in the fridge who lives in a society where pigs are citizens with rights, so he might be more dangerous than you think.

Six Chix, 4/27/20

Look, it’s not secret that newspaper cartooning isn’t as lucrative as it once was. Sure, we’d like to think we have artistic integrity and all that, but if a nice man from the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association called you up one day and explained how some well-intentioned but overzealous laws about chicken living spaces are really hurting America’s family farms, then suggested a joke for a comic and floated a tidy little sum that might be sent your way upon publication, well, would you really argue that much with him? It’s a pretty good joke!

Dennis the Menace, 4/27/20

The US Postal Service — for which Mr. Wilson worked — began home delivery in 1905, so I don’t think this is true, on any level? Unless … is Mr. Wilson immortal, an eternal being kept alive over the centuries by pure grouchiness? It would explain a lot.

Gasoline Alley, 4/27/20

You know what would really help farmers out? Slavery! Child slavery.

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Mary Worth, 4/18/20

OK, I’m sorry, I’ve been willing to indulge Hugo’s cartoonish Francophilia, but did he really say that Hamilton, America’s most beloved cultural product of the last decade, isn’t as good as some tired-ass cabaret show that’s been running for more than 20 years at a venue that caters strictly to tourists and nostalgists? This will not stand, monsieur. This means war.

Judge Parker, 4/18/20

“We’re all gonna touch each other and stand in each other’s personal space and breathe into each other’s faces and give each other Covid-19! It’s gonna be a blast!”

Six Chix, 4/18/20

Big news, everybody: aliens are real and they’re horny as hell