Post Content

Spider-Man, 12/11/17

Oh, hey, remember how MJ was on the verge of being falling victim to the various reptiles that live in the Everglades? The normal ones, not people turned into lizards because they’re trying to grow their arms back or whatever. Anyway, she’s been rescued by … this rugged khaki-clad outdoorsman! Once again my extreme disinterest in Marvel comics leaves me blissfully unaware of who this guy is, which makes it fun for me to speculate. Is he a new character created for this Newspaper Spider-Man storyline? Or is he one of Marvel’s deep bench of third-tier superheroes and/or villains, with a name like … Swamp Fellow, or Reptile Fighter, or the Vigilante Park Ranger, or Our Lawyers Assure Us He Doesn’t Infringe Upon Steve Irwin’s Life Rights Man? Whatever the case, he’s sure to get his own Marvel Cinematic Universe movie or at least a Netflix series by 2021!

Slylock Fox, 12/11/17

“…and you, Shady, are using latex paint!” Slylock proclaimed. “Anyone who knows basic chemistry would know you were the culprit! I arrest you in the name of forest environmental law!” The detective was so busy feeling smug that he barely noticed the frog collapse quietly in the the grass, the rubber paint having thoroughly coated his permeable, breathing skin.

Six Chix, 12/11/17

I have to give a shout-out to Six Chix for simultaneously and largely successfully going two different directions with this joke: imagining the “rat race” in terms of adorable rats with tiny medals and little tank tops, and painting us a picture of a surging, seething mass of rodents, just a nightmarish rat flood that cannot be stopped or escaped.

Post Content

Slylock Fox, 11/22/17

Ha ha, you simpletons, did you think those lovable pigs just munched on apple cores and such? No, they’ll eat anything that can get their suddenly dextrous hands on, and now that they’ve somehow learned to use tools, that can mean a delicious roast chicken right off your table … or you. You with a noose around your neck, dragged out the window, to be devoured alive by a trio of grinning, squealing, bug-eyed pigs. We joke about the Slylockverse animalpocalypse around here, but it must’ve been more horrible than any of us could possibly imagine.

Pluggers, 11/22/17

Man, can I say that I specifically tune into Pluggers for a complete and total absence of anything that might be an even vaguely topical political reference? Anyway, grandpa’s going to prison for treason, I guess.

Family Circus, 11/22/17

A scene from the upcoming Lifetime movie, Please Mommy Don’t Kill Again

Post Content

Slylock Fox, 11/6/17

I’m pretty sure this is the first ever case of Slylock adjudicating a human-on-human crime? Admittedly, he’s mostly intervening to stop a fellow canid from being falsely accused, because otherwise he’d probably be happy to let the hairless two-legs finish each other off in whatever walled ghettos the remnants our once-proud species have been forced to live in. Also, if you’re like me your first though on reading the solution was “Wait a minute, can foxes see red?” According to this website with some extremely 1999-era web design, they can’t, which totally makes sense in context here. “Wait, red jellybeans? I don’t even know what that means. Smitty, you’re under arrest.”

Marvin, 11/6/17

If you’re going to do a strip where sapient dogs and cats exist in a world pretty much like our own, you’re going to have to grapple with some narrative difficulties. For instance, the fact that cats have natural instincts to bury their waste that dogs don’t share has to be recast as cats being “allowed” to potty indoors in a way that dogs are not, despite the fact that they want to. After all, a dog that can think in complete sentences could figure out how to use a litter box, ha ha! Anyway, there are some ways around this difficulty, such as, just for example, not doing so many jokes that revolve around pissing and shitting, for the love of Christ, though I recognize that sadly that technique is unavailable to the Marvin creative team, who have to write poo poo and pee pee jokes constantly, possibly because they lost a bet or are under a curse.