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Slylock Fox, 12/14/20

Longtime readers of this blog know that I’m a big fan of the ordinarily audacious Reeky Rat, and it’s a little sad to see him so humbled here, without even shoes to wear in court. The solution to the “mystery” is just the punchline to an old joke — Reeky is going to pay his bail in quarters, the quarters he stole, ha ha! — but really, this is just Reeky soberly assessing his options. He needs to pay bail, and the only money he has for bail is those quarters. Is his method of bail payment legally admissible evidence? Probably his lawyer could tell him that, if he had a lawyer, but I guess you don’t get a defense attorney in Owl Court. Reeky’s on his own, and he’s just gotta put one foot in front of the other to figure out how to get out of this mess, and it’s sure gonna be a lot easier to do that if he’s not in jail, so it’s time for him to call his nephew to get that suitcase out of the storage locker down at the bus station.

Gil Thorp, 12/14/20

Welp, football season’s over, everybody! Are you ready for some basketball? Charle Roh is, despite the turmoil at home that probably arose when his stepdad engaged in cybercrime in order to advance Charlie’s athletics career, presumably leading to a messy divorce. Marcel Irby is, and he’s probably hoping for more in-strip time than last year, when he rated a single panel for his surrealist performance art. And Leonard Fleming is … not, because Gil threw him in as starting QB entirely for the purpose of punishing his other two QBs, and then he got injured in a meaningless game. Remember back in 2009, when former ace pitcher Marty DeJong, who blew out his arm under Gil’s “care” in pursuit of a championship, came back to Milford looking for revenge? Well, I hope Leonard has the guts to follow through, instead of meekly agreeing to coach little leaguers like Marty did.

Hi and Lois, 12/14/20

“It’s weird, it’s almost like we’re trapped in some inexplicable time distortion where technology and associated social mores change but our kids still stay the same age! Anyway, I guess Dot and Ditto both want an ‘Oculus Rift’ for Christmas, whatever the fuck that is. If they’re gonna text this stuff to me they could at least text me an Amazon link.”

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Crankshaft, 11/25/20

Aw, look at Pam’s little smile in panel three! She’s like, “Normally Dad’s malapropisms make me cringe, but that one … that one’s OK.” She’s wrong, it’s not, it sucks just as bad as all the rest of them. She’s trapped in a horrible wordplay version of Stockholm Syndrome.

Mary Worth, 11/25/20

Tommy, no! Your descent into opioid-fueled madness began when you threw out your back lifting some heavy boxes! You’ve made so much progress — don’t fall back into addiction by eagerly volunteering to tempt fate just to impress Brandy or (even more pathetic) your boss!

Daddy Daze, 11/25/20

Today’s Daddy Daze dispenses with the pretense that the Daddy Daze baby is a “ba”-based interlocutor and shows us its reality for what it is: the Daddy Daze daddy just blathering baroque nonsense to nobody.

Slylock Fox, 11/25/20

I know I say a lot of Slylock Fox scenes have powerful “IT BEGINS” energy vis à vis the moment when the animals rise up to destroy human civilization and create the animal-ruled world where Slylock plies his trade as a detective, but you have to admit that the “IT BEGINS” energy in today’s strip is in fact extremely strong. Those birds are going peck that kid to death, then they’re going to eat the whole bag of birdseed, then they’re going to figure out how to run the birdseed factory, after pecking to death everyone who works there.

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Blondie, 11/20/20

I’m trying very hard to imagine what sort of elementary school curriculum might include the concept of a “horn of plenty”? An art history lesson on how a once commonplace object evolved into a standardized icon over the centuries, and has now become an almost entirely abstract symbol with no grounding in anybody’s day-to-day life, would be very interesting to me, though maybe a little heady for eight-year-olds. Meanwhile, what do you think is the most disturbing/hilarious part of Dagwood’s horn of plenty? A lotta people are going to pick the cooked lobster, which obviously isn’t going to keep very long unrefrigerated, but let’s not sleep on the hamburger that’s just kind of sitting on the table in front of everything else.

Slylock Fox, 11/20/20

You’re probably wondering: What relationship does this entirely mundane domestic scene have to the Slylock Fox world of sapient animal dominance? Well, my guess is that we’re seeing the early post-animalpocalypse period, when the remaining pockets of human survivors have been defeated and confined to restricted zones, only allowed out to forage for subsistence at strictly defined times. This lady’s family is too hungry to wait to get this month’s provisions in the house.

Family Circus, 11/20/20

Wow, looks like Ma and Pa Keane finally gave into BIG GOVERNMENT’S DESPOTIC FIRE CODES and put some smoke alarms in the house, probably because someone from CPS threatened to put their children into foster care if they didn’t, and the kids seemed a little too into the idea.