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The Phantom, 8/24/18

So the Phantom’s daughter Heloise has been locked in a battle of wits with her father’s arch-enemy, the Nomad, and it is not going well for her! The Nomad slipped some bogus info to the TSA at the airport where he stashes his private plane to arrange this little interrogation, and I have to say that I find it both hilarious and terrifyingly plausible that some TSA guys would say, “This random guy we’ve never met tells us he’s overheard a teenage girl saying that terrorists … are good??? Set the entire country’s threat level to orange and get ready for a seven-hour interrogation!”

Six Chix, 8/24/18

I’ve noticed that several recent Six Chix strips set in a therapist’s office have included a discreet box of tissues located near the patient’s couch, which I think is a nice bit of verisimilitude. At least it’s something to cling onto here, where we otherwise have to try to figure out whether this hippo (?) is, like … hovering over the bird, or crushing it, or if they’re both on the couch, or what.

Marvin, 8/24/18

“Five! Five is exactly the right number of coffee shops for a city to have.”

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Six Chix, 8/17/18

The best thing about today’s Six Chix is the knowing smile on the bartender’s face. She’s thinking, “Heh heh, this guy’s right, and it’s great to work in a place where you get the ‘inside scoop’ from people who can provide insights you might not have thought of yourself!” The worst thing is everything else, it’s a horror-nightmare in which gigantic, sloppy-drunk fly-monster from some hell-dimension is yelling out of its uncanny proboscis at the television about one of the current administration’s dumber ongoing storylines.

Mark Trail, 8/17/18

Oh, hey, remember earlier this week when I couldn’t remember who Becky was? Well, it turns out she’s Dr. Carter’s assistant, who we all thought was a diligent archaeologist who insisted on cataloging every artifact they discovered for future scientific study, but in fact is running an artifact smuggling ring! I mean, if you consider walking ten feet away from a tour group in a different temple than the one you found the artifacts in and then pulling an ancient artifact out of a sack and handing it to some other dude who also has a sack a “ring.”

Mary Worth, 8/17/18

Haha, check out Brandy’s face! That is definitely 100% the face of someone who completely believes in her boyfriend and believes in us too! Yep, gonna be smooth sailing from here on out.

Crankshaft, 8/17/18

If you ever wonder what it’s like running the most popular newspaper comics blog on the internet, imagine looking at this Crankshaft comic and thinking to yourself, “Is there a joke here? Is it supposed to be character-driven, like we’re supposed to have enough of a feel for Max’s personality that we think it’s funny he did this? Or maybe it’s … wordplay of some kind,” and then you say the phrase “Max Axelrod loves my arugula” out loud, to nobody, in your home office, multiple times, and finally you just throw it up on your website and say I DUNNO, MAN

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/16/18

At some level, I am sympathetic to the dilemma facing Funky Winkerbean here. We live, after all, in a world where it’s almost impossible to avoid transnational brands. Even a generation ago, Funky and Holly might’ve been likely stopping off at a public rest area to have a picnic lunch; but today even most state-run rest stops are just food courts with a collection of national fast food franchises, and many people avoid them and just head straight for whatever cluster of chains awaits just off any interstate exit. The options for the chronicler of daily life on the road in 2018 are to depict the brands in a matter-of-fact way, and thus serve essentially as an unpaid marketing arm for a megacoporation, or to avoid referring to any particular real company, and risk ruining the sense of verisimilitude. Or, you know, you could take the tack today’s Funky Winkerbean does, which is to build a whole joke around one specific company’s consistently bland omnipresence, but then instead of using the company’s actual name you use a fake name that nevertheless lets everyone recognize the company you’re actually talking about. I wouldn’t advise you to do that, but you definitely could!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/16/18

That’s right, everyone, in the Decalogue YWHW commands His people to “not have any other Gods before me.” Yet in Las Vegas, we are all helpless for the God of Excess, impelled to bow down before the glowing neon and the crass, gargantuan architecture! Roz’s hairdresser is guilty of the sin of idolatry! And, uh, I guess she did one of the sex ones, too, probably.

Spider-Man, 8/16/18

Uh oh, looks like the Golden Claw-Kingpin partnership is running into the sort of snags that often arise when two organizations come together as equal partners with no clear lines of authority or decision making. Looks like Kingpin is going to have to follow up Murder By Committee with another best-selling management tome, Too Many Thugs Spoil The Murder: Why Gang Alliances Need To Establish Clear Delineation Of Responsibility So They Don’t End Up Shooting Someone And Then Setting Them On Fire For No Reason.

Six Chix, 8/16/18

Not sure what I’d say if I accidentally picked up a lit candle, guzzled hot wax, realized after it had seared its way halfway down my gullet what I had done, then vomited it up only to realize in horror that the wax was solidifying in my esophagus, leaving me with a hardened dangle of wax down my chin that I would no doubt paw at with increasing desperation until I asphyxiate, but to my mind “Oh for gosh sakes” would be a little too mild!