The Comics Curmudgeon

Main Menu

Social Media

Archive: Slylock Fox

134

Excited for Mary Worth to get Kafka-seque

Post Content

Panel from Slylock Fox, 11/1/26

My first reaction to this panel was a very strong and visceral feeling that animals wearing fursuits of other animals is just wrong. It’s wrong! And probably you’re going to barge on in and say, ooh, Josh, are you saying that rabbits and lions and mice and foxes are all the same category of thing, as opposed to humans? Are you saying they all look alike to you? And yes, that’s what I’m saying, and at some level they believe it too! Why else does Slylock think that it’s OK to dress up as a mouse who’s as big as a fox? You’re saying he doesn’t “see” size? C’mon now.

Shoe, 11/1/26

Kudos to the artist for adding the little floating dots in Biz’s field of vision in the first panel. That’s a subtle hint that all this talk about “do[ing] it for me” and “the night [being] young” are code for drinking. He’s drunk all he can, because he’s old and can’t hold his liquor anymore! And now he’s probably going to drive home! Good times.

Mary Worth, 11/1/26

I love how Mary methodically worked her way through all the dweebs and idiot morons in her life, and each time another name was named, her thought was “Well, I guess I’m going to have to figure out who they heard this outlandish rumor from.” But as soon as Tommy announced that Nelly was his source, Nelly whom she barely knows (though she frames that relationship in her mind as Nelly rarely taking the golden opportunity to interact with Mary) — the target was acquired. Nelly’s going to pay. Nelly’s going to suffer. Does Nelly think she’s miserable? She doesn’t know the meaning of misery — but she will, and soon.

Comments are closed

Babies, monsters, bird-men

Post Content

Marvin, 9/20/26

Now, if you were a normal person, by which I mean someone who has no idea what Marvin’s whole deal was beyond “Isn’t that a comic about, like, a baby?”, you would probably be taken aback by this strip, which seems to be a pretty harsh indictment of modern millennial parents, sucked into social media and checked out from what the wondrous moments of their kid’s toddlerhood, precious memories they’ll never get back. But Marvin realheads like you and me know that Marvin, the character, is the worst baby around, and deserves his father’s neglect. Who cares what he’s wearing? He sucks!

Shoe, 9/20/26

Given that the uncle-nephew bond is apparently the closest intergenerational relationship the bird-men of Shoe can experience, it’s too bad for the Perfesser that his uncles keep dying. Anyway, I think they should wait to make sure Uncle Walter’s coffin successfully lands in the grave before carving anything into marble.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 9/20/26

OK, yes, he should’ve been smart enough to take the cap off the pen. But the legal status of this monster — is he a sapient animal and therefore a citizen of the Forest Kingdom who needs liberation? a creation of an unclean human and therefore a lesser beast? a dangerous criminal who is competent to be tried and must be jailed? — should send the newly established animal political establishment into a frenzy, and you have to admire the good Count for his gumption in creating it.

Comments are closed

I think it’s weird that Slylock enforces laws about both deceptive advertising practices and major felonies

Post Content

Slylock Fox, 8/3/26

I have no idea what the relationship is between Count Weirdly and the little purple being who’s always hanging around his workplace/castle — is it his creation? his adopted child? his [gulp] biological child? was it spawned by some unnatural process that doesn’t fall into any of those three categories cleanly but falls into all of them in part? — but clearly it views the count in a paternal light, and it’s pretty devastating that it’s so excited to show off the Count’s supposedly legitimate business enterprise to Slylock, only for the Fox Detective to immediately debunk the whole scam. Also, unrelated, but I’ve never really had much reason to contemplate whether Weirdly was wearing anything under his trademark shapeless nightgown, but the very vivid buttrack on display here implies that he probably isn’t.

Crock, 8/3/26

The past is in fact another country, as this Crock strip from 1998 demonstrates. Sure, the idea of a boy baby aggressively hitting on a girl baby and being punished for it is timeless, but why is the girl named “Cyber”? Was this the setup to a joke about computers that turned out to be too hard to execute so they fell back on the classics, or did the Crock creative team in 1998 simply say “What are they naming girl babies these days? Cyber, right? That’s a word I hear a lot but I don’t know what it means, so it’s probably a girl’s name.”

The Lockhorns, 8/3/26

I spent some time trying to parse Leroy’s facial expression here and the conclusion I came to is that it’s supposed to represent “sophisticated horny.” Like he’s thinking, “Ah, yes, women’s beach volleyball … the intellectual’s sport. You get to enjoy athletes at the top of their game demonstrating their prowess at leaping and spiking the ball, all in a beautiful seaside setting. And if one of these statuesque competitors were to engender a pleasant feeling of arousal in me while I watched? Well, I’m mostly trying to keep tabs on various stats to see how my fantasy team is doing, but that would be an added bonus.”