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Slylock Fox, 2/21/23

So I guess these nightmare-bugs are supposed to be … termites? Or some other horrible bug that feasts on wood, but I’m not going to bother researching what that might be because I’d probably end up seeing actual photographs of these nightmares, which is definitely not something I’m up for. My point, though, is that clearly whatever sinister process granted sapience to the animals of the Slylockverse did so to even the very tiny and very gross among them. The question that today’s strip raises is whether these bugs, as part of their transformation, achieved human-scale proportions in defiance of the square-cube law, or if they remained tiny but their chefs carve bits of wood into miniature replicas of full-sized logs, as part of a elaborate culinary culture that we’re just getting a glimpse of here.

Pluggers, 2/21/23

Pluggers is, of course, a fundamentally sad text, a ongoing and often quite grim paean to a supposedly bygone set of mores. Today, however, may be the first panel I can remember in which the practice being held up as an object of nostalgic longing is just obviously, demonstrably worse than what we have now. “Oh, can you kids today block that creepy guy you work with on Instagram so he doesn’t post borderline sexual comments on every one of your selfies, and also complain to HR about him? In my day, if I didn’t want to know he was jerking off, I would have to just leave my phone off the hook so that he couldn’t call me and nobody could either, and also quit my job!”

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Slylock Fox, 2/17/23

From years of reading Slylock Fox together, we’ve come to understand that the world it depicts is one where the animals rose up against humans, exterminated most of them, and then went on to recreate human society the best they could, living in our cities, establishing political, legal, and economic structures that mimic our own, and so on. There’s been less attention spent on the animals’ cultural production, but here too we must assume that they’re following a human template, publishing animal-themed comics in animal-focused newspapers with punchlines that make animals laugh and make the few remaining humans go “Huh. Huh. Huh?”

Family Circus, 2/17/23

Look, Keane parents, you’ve lived with these children for several years now, and the fact that you’ve chosen to decorate your house with an endless expanse of pure white wall-to-wall carpet without regard for the very obvious consequences is entirely on you.

Mary Worth, 2/17/23

TIRED: Estelle keeps running into her ex, Wilbur, who she finds annoying
WIRED: Estelle, having succumbed to Wilburmadness, hallucinates her ex wherever she goes

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Slylock Fox, 2/13/23

This deceitful dog may be the one who’s putting the scam into action, but I don’t think he’s the mastermind behind it. Look at that dull, defeated face: that’s not the look of “Curses, my master plan, foiled!” so much as “Well, here I am, taking the fall once again because I thought I could make some easy money doing low-level crimes that I was assured I would not be prosecuted for.” And what exactly is the scam here? Is it “first we release the spiders into your house, then you pay us to kill the spiders?” It probably would’ve been better for Sly to have held off on arresting the guy until after part two, in my opinion.

Blondie, 2/13/23

I love the implication here that Claudia, despite sitting just inches away from these guys, has missed the entire context for this conversation, possibly because they started talking and then she retreated to her mind palace to escape the blather. And who can blame her!

Dustin, 2/13/23

Look, Ed, your wife is trying to muster up some enthusiasm for your twice-monthly hand job, can you just shut the fuck up for two minutes