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Dustin and Funky Winkerbean, 1/13/22

The general vibe of the newspaper comics industry is small-c conservative — that is, it’s mostly created by older middle-class people who, whatever their opinions on electoral politics, generally assume that society will and should remain more or less as it is today or was in their youth. Therefore, it’s a little surprising to see the comics pages go in hard today on the proposition that heterosexual monogamy is a soul-crushing prison, but here we are! I feel like I can respect both these approaches: Dustin offers a younger character’s viewpoint as she watches her parents pick at each other’s weak spots and realizes that their lifestyle choice is unsustainable, whereas Funky Winkerbean really swings for the fences and takes what could’ve been a bland depiction of a tiny bit of marital friction and elevates it by having Funky say one of those trademark Funkyverse things that are something that nobody would ever, ever say and are also apparently supposed to be a punchline.

Slylock Fox, 1/13/22

Meanwhile, today’s Slylock Six Differences is about a little boy who’s surprised to find himself sitting in a puddle of his little sibling’s piss! That’s definitely supposed to be piss, right? This would maybe be a little less graphic in the newspaper, where everything would be in black and white, and I feel for the syndicate colorist who got this file in their email, sighed heavily, and starting hunting through the Photoshop color wheel for just the right shade of yellow.

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Slylock Fox, 1/10/22

This is at least the third time this mystery has appeared in Slylock Fox: it showed up in 2013, with exactly the same art albeit with different coloring, and had previously appeared in 2011, with different art but the same basic mystery and solution. My earlier commentary on those strips in both cases was predicated on the same scenario: that Shady Shrew had enslaved sapient silkworms and was forcing them to manufacture clothes from which he profited. But I must be mellowing in my old age, because my first thought today on reading the strip was “But wait! What if Shady has actually developed a new plant-based silk substitute, liberating his fellow animals from toil? Did you put that possibility into your ratiocination calculus, Slylock? Of course not, but Shady doesn’t need your approval! Society will hail him as a hero, at least until the plants become sapient too.”

Dick Tracy, 1/10/22

Not much to say specifically here, I just think this is a pretty good Dick Tracy fight panel, with the moody shadows and the KRAKing and BLAMing and such! I don’t really expect either of the participants to die in some baroquely violent way like in the good old days, but I won’t pretend I don’t enjoy this!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/10/22

You ever get a bunch of annoying car warranty scam calls and think of a great joke for your hillbilly-themed comic strip, then remember that your hillbilly characters don’t actually have access to phones, but you don’t feel like coming up with a new joke so you just kind of work around it? Because if you did, the result would look a lot like today’s Snuffy Smith. Also, does Snuffy think that mules live forever? If so, he’s in for an extremely rude surprise, possibly soon.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 12/19/21

I initially assumed the solution to this mystery would be animal fact based: bears really do eat salmon and raccoons really do eat lobsters, so the wolf would only get theatrically excited about oysters as part of his criminal middleman routine. But the “strongest alibi” bit truly gets into the Orwellian mindfuck that is life in Slylock’s Forest Kingdom, where you can be immediately found guilty not despite the fact that you have the most evidence pointing to your innocence but because of it! Please do not dwell on the litany of horrors Sly subjected this poor wolf to in order to “convince” him to confess, this is a comic for children.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 12/19/21

Yeah, man, my wife does too? I think think it’s pretty normal for your partner to generally be aware of when you’re in bed, to be honest. Come on, Leroy, this one is a stretch. I am intrigued by the lady who’s just discovered an outlet for her “jolly old elf” fetish, however.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/19/21

I think this is a pretty good look at who would watch this livestream and feel vaguely bad about their contribution to the feeding frenzy over “Cynthia Ivy”‘s real identity: basically normal looking kids and extremely dweeby adults.

Panel from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/19/21

TIRED: Saying “Happy Holidays” is offensive to Real Americans because it diminishes the unique religious importance of Christmas

WIRED: Saying “Happy Holidays” is offensive to Real Americans because it reminds us of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, a strip created by liberal coastal elitists specifically to make fun of the rural poor