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Marvin, 7/31/19

I guess i’s a step forward that today’s Marvin absolutely infuriated me for entirely non-poop related reasons. No, I’m just furious about how badly this punchline is botched! There are actually two perfectly good ways this basic joke could be done:

JOKE STRUCTURE #1 (kinda basic, but still very effective)

PANEL ONE:
BERNIE: Remember that old TV show Cheers, where everybody at the bar knows your name?
ROY: Yeah

PANEL TWO:
BERNIE: Well, it’s like that when I go to the medical building

PANEL THREE:
THERE IS NO PANEL THREE BECAUSE THE FIRST TWO PANELS ACTUALLY CONVEY EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW! THE MEDICAL BUILDING IS WHERE EVERYONE KNOWS BERNIE’S NAME, BECAUSE HE’S OLD AND SICK A LOT! JOKE OVER!

JOKE STRUCTURE #2 (maybe a little daring for a comic strip, but I think it would work)

PANEL ONE:
BERNIE: Remember that old TV show Cheers, where everybody at the bar knows your name?
ROY: Yeah

PANEL TWO:
BERNIE: Well, it’s like that when I go to the medical building

PANEL THREE:
BERNIE: Everyone there is a drunk!

But no, instead, we just get a third panel that doesn’t add any more twists to the punchline, but rather just explains what the punchline was. It doesn’t work! It doesn’t work at all! I almost wish Marvin had shit his pants, to distract us!

Dick Tracy, 7/31/19

Don’t worry yourself, Vitamin: I’m sure that the theater, which you literally own, felt absolutely free to make a decision as to whether to cast you in the role you so transparently and desperately want based entirely on artistic criteria. If you don’t believe me, believe the adoring, much younger woman you knocked up!

Six Chix, 7/31/19

I’ve been staring at this for a long time and trying to figure out why all the action is a circle in the middle of the panel surrounded by blackness. I guess it’s supposed to be like we’re looking at the scene through a camera, with the implication being “Sure, we live in a society where in order to afford the most basic necessities we might need to leverage our ability to inspire pity on social media, but at least we’re also under continuous surveillance”?

Dennis the Menace, 7/31/19

I accept that Dennis’s menacing levels have waxed and waned over the years, but I have to draw the line at this sort of wide-eyed sub-Family Circus-ism delivered while cradling a teddy bear. The only way this is at all appropriate if it’s part of a larger plan to send Joey spiraling down a dark path experimenting with hallucinogens too young and too often.

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Dustin, 7/30/19

Oh, snap, is Dustin about to get get catfished? Seems that way! Now, I don’t mean to be rude to elder brethren, and clearly there are gullible marks and savvy sharps of all age groups, but just as a general rule, you might expect it to be the older folks in this strip who are more likely to by successfully cybergrifted, wouldn’t you? But you have to keep in mind that while Dustin presents itself as a relatively even-handed strip about the little foibles and frictions that arise when Baby Boomers and Millennials live under the same roof, it’s mostly about how Dustin, in particular, is the dumbest motherfucker alive.

Gasoline Alley, 7/30/19

I’m not saying any of us could’ve predicted this, necessarily, but if someone had asked, “Which long-running continuity comic strip is going to feature a shiny object snatched away from a major character by a keen-eyed corvid?” we’d all have said “Oh, Gasoline Alley, no question.” I for one support the choice to set this episode in Gasoline Alley’s hitherto unexplored “Little Jalisco” neighborhood, because seeing Rufus getting roasted by passersby in Spanish is definitely funnier than it would be in English by an order of magnitude.

Six Chix, 7/30/19

Oh wow, is this a comic strip about witches fighting against death itself, with one particularly angry witch stealing the scythe used to reap souls, for her own inscrutable and possibly terrifying purposes? This is an extremely metal development! All the money in entertainment today is in massive cross-platform tentpole franchises, and Six Chix has clearly been trying to make that happen with interrelated storylines like “I Fucked A Bigfoot” and “What If Bigfoot Were A Lady In Sexy High Heels” and “The Bible: A Quentin Tarantino Film,” but let me gently suggest that “Witches vs. Death” has a lot more potential.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/30/19

Oh, uh, it looks like when I jokingly said that the villain in this new age grifter storyline would be Rene the art forger I was … right? Huh. Huh. You know, when longtime writer Woody Wilson handed this strip over to Terry Beatty, the storylines got a lot less over-the-top and there have honestly been fewer cartoonish villains, which is why it’s particularly funny to me that Rene, who was an amiable and kooky character during the Wilson era, is now the sinister mastermind behind literally all crime.

Mary Worth, 7/30/19

Man, you’d think the whole point of having a meddling busybody of a condo manager is that at least you wouldn’t have to worry about fully clothed college students making out in the pool. C’mon, Mary, you’re slacking on the job here!

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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!