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Crock, 7/25/19

I’m not usually a “this political cartoon needs more labels” guy, but today’s Crock — which is not, strictly speaking, a political cartoon, but nevertheless is rich in political content — needs some more explanation of what the hell its point is, because folks: there’s a lot going on here. It’d be one thing if the implication was that the Kids Today have turned away from baseball cards (or, more generically “sport trading cards”) and instead turned to CEO cards; it could be some ambiguous statement about changing priorities, or the entrepreneurial nature of the kids today. But the reference to the “crime stats” really puts a whole different spin on it. Is Maggot’s side-eye a criticism of our lawless culture’s affect on children, where predatory business practices are lionized and the youth fall under the sway of win-at-any-cost business leaders? Or is the children’s card game meant to be a critique of capitalism, and Maggot’s discomfort is with this obvious socialist propaganda dissuading the youth from respecting those who’ve worked hard to create jobs? And why is there a vulture involved? I mean, I know the larger sense there’s a vulture character in Crock, but is he meant to be symbolic here? Does he represent venture (“vulture”) capital funds, which buy up unprofitable companies and strip them for parts? Does he represent Marxist “revolutionaries” hoping to gorge on the wealth created by productive capitalists? WHY? WHY AM I THINKING ABOUT THIS SO MUCH? WHY??????

Six Chix, 7/25/19

Now here’s a strip that doesn’t need any explanation! Just a mom cockroach and her adorable little kid cockroach, and they love each other! Nothing weird or unpleasant or confusing about that!

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Six Chix, 7/23/19

Look, folks: I make fun of Six Chix quite a bit here, but the truth is, not everything is for everyone, you know? These strips aren’t really written with me in mind, and that’s OK! They’re for people who are maybe a little older, who maybe have little less “edgy” sensibility than I do. Suburban moms who just want to open the paper and laugh at life’s little foibles, to see a joke then can relate to. Who among us hasn’t run into a few problems with short-term memory as they age, right? Who among us hasn’t had long stretches of the day that they can’t remember, that they can’t account for, but feel a gnawing sense that something horrible happened in those missing hours? Haven’t we all had “one of those days,” where you come to, not sure whether it’s “wine o’clock” or even what day or time of year it is, covered in blood, so much blood, you’d think there’d be a body here with all this blood, but it’s nowhere to be found? Maybe the body’s in the closet. Is there more blood around the closet? It’s so hard to tell. The blood is everywhere.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/23/19

You might think it cruel that Snuffy is laughing at his nephew for trying and failing spectacularly to bake himself a tasty dessert. In fact, he’s laughing that anyone — especially anyone who lives with him — would assume he owns anything as useful and potentially economically productive as a hammer and chisel.

Sam and Silo, 7/23/19

Wow, I have to admit that I haven’t been keeping up with the latest currents in Roman Catholic theology, but I’m pretty surprised they’ve gone from Vatican II to “humanity is an infestation of vermin too powerful for even God to kill” in less than sixty years.

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Six Chix, 7/17/19

I really have to admire the amount of absurd world-building packed into this single panel. What you have here is a very small fishbowl, containing three fish, two of whom are mobsters (right? that’s what the implications of the dark glasses and the … hat and pipe … are supposed to be?), and they’re about to murder fish #3, for winning at cards. This just brings up a whole slew of other questions: What is the point of a criminal gang in a tiny community like a fishbowl, especially if two thirds of the inhabitants are members? What will the all-mafia society look like after poor Vince is killed? Is the (presumable) human owner of this fishbowl, the one who’s going to fish poor Vince out and flush him down the toilet, going to go out and buy a new fish to bring into the mix? Well the mobster-fish then bilk that fish out of its money at cards, by skill, cheating, or violence? What use is money in a society made up of three people (or three sapient fish) and no manufactured goods? Lots to think about, please email me your essays on the topic!

Curtis, 7/17/19

Nice try, Greg! The term “millennial” is slippery, but almost every definition sets the cutoff birth years in the mid-to-late 90s, which means the very youngest millennials are more than 20 years old at this point! Your son is “Gen Z” or whatever they’re going to end up calling themselves. You know who may well be a millennial is you, Greg, as the top of that cohort is in its late 30s at this point. “LOL,” as you kids say! (As a Gen-Xer, I personally can’t wait for the Generational Wars to end with Generation [Unpronounceable Glyph] refusing to interact with us in any way until it comes time for them to harvest the precious moisture in our bodies.)

Funky Winkerbean, 7/17/19

I don’t think I’d noticed before that Young Cliff Anger looks uncannily like handsome movie actor Mason Jarre. You’d think with a mug like that he wouldn’t have to be a writer to make it in Hollywood! Oh, wait, right, the Communism meant he couldn’t show his pretty face in polite company. Well, at least he has a simian pal to keep him company! Maybe Funky Winkerbean is just going to pivot to being a wacky strip about a happy-go-lucky Stalinist and his drunken chimp roommate, and I cannot emphasize enough how much of an improvement that would be.