Post Content

Mary Worth, 12/15/17

I am as always extremely here for Mary’s consistent “age ain’t nothin’ but a number” attitude about the Zak-Iris romance. It is of course all the more hilariously deployed in reaction to Toby’s gender-normative discomfort, since her transformation from hipster Greenwich Village artist to bored California trophy wife and occasional sculptor of hideous animal-blobs began when she as a mere lass was swept off her feet by a drunken, late-middle-aged Ian. Anyway, Mary’s drive-by shaming of Toby’s hypocrisy is great, but I hope the real point of all this becomes clear when one of the hunky fortysomething venture capitalists investing in Zak’s dumb video game company comes calling and Mary’s like “Dr. Jeff? I don’t know anybody by that name!”

Gil Thorp, 12/15/17

Gil Thorp is by definition a comic strip that’s heavily invested in high school athletics, and I guess we’ve finally got to the point of this football season’s storyline, which is that, sure, sometimes promising young men play football and get concussions that turn their brains into goo, but what if they love playing football, and what about loyalty, discipline, and hard work, and what are the other options, huh? Some dork with a goatee trying to strongarm you into becoming a YouTube singing sensation??? This feminized PC culture makes me sick.

Mark Trail, 12/15/17

OK, fine, if we’re not going to get an extended storyline where Mark and Johnny actually perform a wildlife census, at least let us flash back to that time Mark got stranded in the Great Plains without any food and had to survive by making “prairie dog tacos.”

Blondie, 12/15/17

As Christmas approaches, please let’s remember the real reason for the season: goosing sales in order to shore up the collapsing retail sector by offering no-interest loans to an already over-indebted populace!

Six Chix, 12/15/17

hey this is a metaphor for the current housing affordability crisis but if you take it to its logical conclusion all those pricey new homes are made from human flesh OK enjoy your weekend everybody

Post Content

Spider-Man, 12/11/17

Oh, hey, remember how MJ was on the verge of being falling victim to the various reptiles that live in the Everglades? The normal ones, not people turned into lizards because they’re trying to grow their arms back or whatever. Anyway, she’s been rescued by … this rugged khaki-clad outdoorsman! Once again my extreme disinterest in Marvel comics leaves me blissfully unaware of who this guy is, which makes it fun for me to speculate. Is he a new character created for this Newspaper Spider-Man storyline? Or is he one of Marvel’s deep bench of third-tier superheroes and/or villains, with a name like … Swamp Fellow, or Reptile Fighter, or the Vigilante Park Ranger, or Our Lawyers Assure Us He Doesn’t Infringe Upon Steve Irwin’s Life Rights Man? Whatever the case, he’s sure to get his own Marvel Cinematic Universe movie or at least a Netflix series by 2021!

Slylock Fox, 12/11/17

“…and you, Shady, are using latex paint!” Slylock proclaimed. “Anyone who knows basic chemistry would know you were the culprit! I arrest you in the name of forest environmental law!” The detective was so busy feeling smug that he barely noticed the frog collapse quietly in the the grass, the rubber paint having thoroughly coated his permeable, breathing skin.

Six Chix, 12/11/17

I have to give a shout-out to Six Chix for simultaneously and largely successfully going two different directions with this joke: imagining the “rat race” in terms of adorable rats with tiny medals and little tank tops, and painting us a picture of a surging, seething mass of rodents, just a nightmarish rat flood that cannot be stopped or escaped.

Post Content

Six Chix, 12/3/17

Congratulations, Six Chix: You’ve created a snail-inhabited Christmas cartoon where I have literally no idea what’s going on! Like, the fact that there are anthropomorphized snails in the foreground implies that we’re in a parallel universe where snails are the intelligent, dominant species and have built a civilization that rivals our own. And yet outside they see not a snail-Santa driving his sleigh, but rather a snail in chains apparently used as a beast of burden. Then there’s the combination of obvious alarm about Christmas’s lateness on the part of our snail-speaker — whatever snails’ other evolutionary advantages in this reality, they’re clearly still comically slow — and “not again!” implying that this isn’t the first time the delivery of presents around the globe was entrusted to an individual wildly unsuited to getting the job done in a timely fashion.

Finally, there’s the real question underlying all of this: if there’s such a thing as snail Christmas, that means there was definitely such a person as Snail Christ.But how do you crucify something that doesn’t have any arms?

Crankshaft, 12/3/17

“The gold was just lying around here. Kind of like the dismembered body parts of all the people I ‘murder[ed] in the bookstore.’ Wait, did I say that last part out loud?”