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Panels from Slylock Fox, 2/20/22

Today’s Six Differences offer an even more disturbing and nightmarish world than usual. The vision of a giant bottle containing four enormous and very much alive flies, which presumably this frog is going to somehow suck out through the nipple, is extremely disturbing to me. Plus you’ve got to take into consideration the fact that an actual baby frog would be a tadpole, so this is clearly an adult engaging in some kind of weird infantilization fetish play with the “nurse” cat. And all out in public to boot! That owl and that rabbit are absolutely correct to be angry about this.

Dustin, 2/20/22

God, look at Dustin’s dad’s hooded eyes in that final panel: he is so unpleasantly proud of himself for coming up with this bit, which I guarantee the car scammer heard exactly two words of before he realized his grift wasn’t working and hung up the phone. Dustin’s mom is loving it, though! These two deserve each other.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/20/22

I’m posting the whole strip here just so you can see the latest legally dubious plot developments, but all I want to talk about is Rene striding into this room like a king and confidently bellowing “Rene Belluso is here. Let the meeting commence!” This would absolutely set a great tone for any meeting of any sort, whether held in person or on Zoom, and I urge you to try it at the next opportunity. You can say your actual name or just say “Rene Belluso,” I’m sure either would work great.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 1/16/22

I just want to offer my 100% unironic appreciation of everything going on in this panel. I love the weird angle we’re seeing Shady from, I love his expression as he watches his nemeses through the grate, I love the way he’s cradling that bag of cash and the way Max is ogling the few scattered bills on the floor, and I definitely love the look of smug triumph on Sly’s face as he gets ready to hit the dial button, knowing exactly what’s coming next. Shady is definitely dumb enough to leave his ringer on while doing crimes, but is he dumb enough to give his cell number to Slylock in the first place? Maybe, but it’s just as likely that the Forest Kingdom’s NSA equivalent is happy to hand out the phone numbers of known undesirables to law enforcement. There’s no such thing as human rights in a state where humans have been hunted to near extinction!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/16/22

Oh, man, remember a few years ago how Snuffy found his dad in the woods where he had been asleep for decades, Rip Van Winkle style? You’d think that would make him really appreciate the world’s possibilities and work to make the most of his new lease on life, but no, he’s just going back to chicken-based crime. You hate to see it!

Funky Winkerbean, 1/16/22

I sincerely hope that that is the helmet that Bull died in. We deserve that much.

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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.