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Slylock Fox, 6/25/12

One of the great strengths of Slylock Fox is its ability to create little self-contained stories with only a single panel and a few sentences; still, I think today’s installment could have used a bit more fleshing out, particularly when it comes to how Benny Beaver (aka the “Toothy Tumbler,” a nickname he presumably only earned at this precise moment) came to just fall out of a plane without a parachute. More to the point, why is he taking a flight in tiny airplane with Max and Sly in the first place? We all know that Slylock’s world is a dictatorship where the power of police is not restrained by any kind of independent judiciary, so my first instinct was that Benny was a political dissident that Slylock was eliminating Argentine junta-style, but Slylock’s showy rescue obviously eliminates this possibility. Unless it’s elaborate theater, an attempt (one that Slylock will deliberately botch) to show that he tried his best to rescue the clumsy water-rodent, despite Benny’s known subversive attitudes towards the benevolent Slylockian state? Anyway, since Max appears to have been left alone in the airplane — an airplane with controls that he is far too tiny to operate properly — Slylock may be taking care of several of his rodent problems at once here.

Blondie, 6/25/12

I would find this clerk’s befuddlement more believable were it not for the fact that he’s working in some kind of vintage electronics store, what with the countertop ad for a flip-phone with an antenna and the clearly visible Apple Newton and handheld VHS cameras in the display case.

Archie, 6/25/12

I keep meaning to tell y’all: If you are interested in some of the really quite fetching clothing designs that have appeared in Archie Comics over the years, you owe it to yourself to check out the Betty and Veronica Fashions Tumblr. I bring it up now because if there were some kind of evil mirror-universe version of this Tumblr that focused on hideous, ill-drawn outfits from the mid-’90s reruns in the Archie newspaper strip, Reggie would totally have earned a place in it by wearing whatever the hell it is he has on here.

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Spider-Man, 6/17/12

You get to a point with these Newspaper Spider-Man villains where you just give up on them ever being actually fearsome and embrace their camp value. Thus I was genuinely delighted to see that Clown-9, in addition to being a goofy dope who drives a duck car and thinks a high-powered squirt gun is threatening and has no higher ambitions of evil than disrupting a Broadway play, also thinks “not” jokes are funny.

Still, the final panel worries me, delightful as it is to see “SPIDEY: 0” written out explicitly. Is Clown-9 suddenly transforming from a lovable weirdo into something truly terrifying? Is he gaining super-strength, Hulk-style? Is he unveiling some kind of super-weapon? Is he renouncing “not” jokes, which Spidey loves almost as much as he does?

Panel from Slylock Fox, 6/17/12

Whoops, sorry about the permanent injury you suffered from being dragged around by the ears, wholly innocent rabbit! I guess the lesson here is that you shouldn’t act twitchy around cops in Slylock’s thuggish police state.

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Slylock Fox, 6/11/12

“Hmm, yes, that is an interesting fact, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, about tadpoles not having legs. But did you know that adult amphibians, like Mr. Buford Bullfrog, breathe through their skin? Which means that they’d never smear ‘moisturizing’ gunk on themselves, because it would be a death sentence! So why would Mr. Bullfrog have stolen the moisturizer in the first place, hmm? It just doesn’t add up!” This is what Buford Bullfrog’s lawyer would say, if he had a lawyer, if defendants in Slylock-world were actually allowed decent representation. But no, they’re just dragged into court and forced to sit wide-eyed in terror as Slylock plays his little ratiocination games and everyone laughs. Then presumably comes the summary execution.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/11/12

Try as he might, Snuffy can’t break through the codes of sexual shame so prevalent in his community and tell his best friend that he was molested by a senator.

Mark Trail, 6/11/12

“Hmm, I just parted company with a bush pilot whom I openly accused of murder, though I’ve also made it clear that I’m the only one who knows about the evidence against him! Now a bush plane is flying low very close to me. I wonder what’s going on!” Thank goodness for Mark that our sporting killer only shoots people in the water.

Ziggy, 6/11/12

I have less of a problem with the mouse sitting on the pad than I do with the mouse sitting on the pad so … alluringly.