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Archive: Slylock Fox

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Max will never be swole

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 12/11/22

There’s a lot going on in this panel — Max trying and failing to pump iron; how peevish the alligator gym attendent is about this crime; “Biceppe’s”; the fact that Harry Ape is wearing a fedora to the gym — and I love all of it. I also love the solution to the mystery, which plays on our idea that ape feet are really pretty hand-like, so it makes sense that they’d leave prints, but also lets us know that human toeprints could be used as evidence as well, so you’d better not be out there committing crimes barefoot. Anyway, it’s really too bad for Harry that when the ascendent animals took over the wreckage of our civilization, they couldn’t figure out our advanced “gloves, but for feet” technology.

Mary Worth, 12/11/22

I honestly cannot get over the fact that Iris is more or less ignoring the weird hot babysitter sexual roleplay vibe Zak and Nan have been putting out for this entire encounter and only seems to care about how much she and Nan look alike. (And I guess that Nan can’t remember her name, which is genuinely annoying.) Anyway, she seems not to be hung up on the age gap thing at the moment, so it’s good that she didn’t verbalize the Doublement commercial joke, because they haven’t aired those since the mid ’80s and Zak definitely would not get it.

Hi and Lois, 12/11/12

Every once in a while Hi and Lois decides its mission is to paint an uncompromising portrait of middle-class suburban life. Like today, for instance, when the joke is that a man has cheaped out on a Christmas tree, then tried and failed to lie to his wife about it.

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Monday is for grudging respect

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Slylock Fox, 10/31/22

The thing I absolutely love and respect about Slick Smitty is that every time we see him, Slylock and the animal cops have him absolutely dead to rights, yet he still has the shit-eating grin on his face that says that he doesn’t believe he’ll receive any consequences for his actions or simply doesn’t care about them if he does. That’s true even in circumstances like today’s, when he’s dressed in an extremely stupid costume in order to pull of an even stupider crime, and hooked up to one of those lie detector machines that the animals have advanced from the current level of “not a lie detector, just a detector of elevated heart rates and other physical activity” to “detects lies, but unable to understand low-level ‘truths’ and ‘falsehoods’ as part of a larger semantic context.”

Dick Tracy, 10/31/22

I’ve had my differences with Vitamin Flintheart in the past, but I respect his theater company’s total commitment to verisimilitude. They have access to an extremely lifelike robotic dog that can talk, and yet they’re still trying to find a trained real dog for the non-talking scenes! You don’t want the human actors to start worrying about getting replaced by robots, now do you.

Gasoline Alley, 10/31/22

Say what you will about Gasoline Alley, but as its name implies, it began as a strip about people talking about motor vehicles, so I have to respect the amount of panel space it’s dedicating to people going into great detail about the different kinds of garbage trucks in use today.

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The man would do a lot for pancakes

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Crock, 10/16/22

I’ve been reading Crock for … let’s just say “many” years now, so I am of course well familiar with all of its terrible running gags, one of which is that Crock’s mother (never actually seen in the strip) is in a nursing home somewhere and she’s very, very mean, even meaner than her cruel son. But in all that time, I always assumed (quite reasonably, I think) that the nursing home she was in was back in France. Algeria is a colony under military occupation, which is the very reason Crock and the Legion are there in the first place! It’s no place for old French civilian ladies! But no, it turns out that she’s been in the Maghreb all along, which really raises a lot of questions about (a) whether the creative minds behind Crock ever really had a handle on the geopolitics behind Beau Geste or if they just liked the aesthetic, and (b) why Crock never visits his mother if she’s actually so close.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/16/22

Ha ha, wow, looks like Hank Jr.’s impulsive marriage really was meant to be. They’re both fans of roots country legend Truck Taylor! Who could’ve guessed? Not Hank Sr., he’s not going to the concert because he clearly hates that shit, but he’s making nice to keep the pancakes coming.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 10/16/22

No real notes here, just want to say that I am in love with Koppy’s sarcastic greeting here. They might not have invented a Bill of Rights for animals yet, but nothing can stop Koppy from firing off the subtle yet sick burns! Except getting punched in the mouth by Slylock, probably.