Post Content

Slylock Fox, 9/12/10

We’ve all wondered exactly how the justice system in Slylock-world works, what with the same criminals being repeatedly captured but then turned loose on the streets to perpetrate annoyingly overcomplex scams again. Today we see the consequences of a society judged by soft-on-crime owls. An injured Slylock meekly offers some sad little animal facts to try to put his assailant away, while the the grinning Brick Bull and his sleazy rat-lawyer know that he’ll be out on the street randomly goring more innocent passersby before you know it.

Judge Parker, 9/12/10

So Neddy has spent most of this week making a last tearful and moderately smoochy goodbye to her first love, Mark. And what has current boyfriend been doing while all this goes on? Why, just putting the finishing touches on his scheme to scam $3 million from the rich and gullible Sam Driver. Hopefully Ned will respect him now, for his initiative!

Apartment 3-G, 9/12/10

Wow, so all this time I’ve been assuming that Lu Ann’s miscolored “rich brown curls” were a result of problems at the syndicate colorists, but the comics artists tend to be more in charge of coloring on Sundays so, uh, yeah. Is “rich brown” a new code-phrase for “red” these days, to combat anti-ginger prejudice? Or is this whole “reality show” just being put on by the inmates of an insane asylum, like the play-within-the-play in Marat/Sade?

Post Content

Slylock Fox, 9/6/10

One of the great meta-mysteries of the Slylock Fox strip is: who exactly is Slylock’s employer? Does he work for the mostly dog-staffed police force, or is he a private eye for hire? Today’s strip seems to suggest the latter. The library system, not trusting the generally incompetent law enforcement system, obviously scraped together what it could out of its tightened budget to hire the best detective around to get that computer back. But the cemetery, whose fresh graves Count Weirdly is raiding for body parts that he can sew together and reanimate in a ghastly parody of life? Did they write Sly a check? No? Then screw them. What corpse-monster? I don’t see any corpse-monster. Just hand over the computer, Count, and I forget everything else I saw here.

Apartment 3-G, 9/6/10

Well, it’s yet another Monday, and the chances that this makeover storyline is the secret cover for a change of artist seem to be pretty much nil at this point. Certainly everyone in the audience is looking as appalling as ever. Any makeover show host worth her salt would, as soon as she laid eyes on Martin, stop in mid-sentence and rip that orange suit/yellow tie combo right off his body, then grab him by the scruff of his neck and drag him back stage to fix whatever is going on with his hair.

Post Content

Does a bear make mischief in the woods?

Slylock Fox, 9/1/10

It doesn’t surprise me to see this bear casually destroying a nice sign that a thoughtful forest ranger put up. Bears are a sinister menace who will stop at nothing to lure humans into feeding them … with human flesh. What does sadden me is to see that an innocent beaver has been roped into this tomfoolery. “Hey, beaver friend,” the bear probably said, “that sign says ‘Don’t feed the beavers!’ You don’t want that sign still standing by the riverside, do you?” Beavers are notoriously semi-literate; this beaver probably just saw that the last word started with ‘B’ and ended with ‘R’ and believed the bear’s lies, the poor trusting soul. At least he looks happy, doing the bear’s bidding. I hope the bear doesn’t eat him after this.

Dennis the Menace, 9/1/10

Dennis does occasionally do a bit of legit menacing, and my favorite type is when he humiliates his father in public. I like to think that today he’s been sitting on this gag until he spotted the preppiest, douchiest guy on the golf course to use as the agent for his father’s debasement. “My dad can’t drive a golf ball very far, and he also wears a brown sweater with black pants. That’s because he’s lower-middle class, and always will be, no matter how much money he makes! Did you know that he went to public schools — even for college?“