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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

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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.

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Shoe, 9/11/17

One of the main things I will remembered for long after my death is coining the term “nephewism,” which now has its own TV Tropes entry, and basically describes a common trope where the protagonist is cared for by an aunt and/or uncle with no actual parents around. Sometimes this is mined for creative backstory once the world of the strip has been established (as in the case for Spider-Man, which is what I made up the word to describe); other times, as in Shoe, it mainly serves to graft a younger character into the world of an established one without having to create a sexual life for the latter. Who are Skyler’s parents? How long has he lived with his Uncle Cosmo, who clearly barely tolerates him? We haven’t gotten much information on the rest of the Fishhawk family, which is why the Perfesser’s mention of his grandfather (Skyler’s great-grandfather) is kind of poignant. “Yep, grandpa used to lure fish into the boat by keeping his mouth filled with worms, which sounds disgusting but it’s not, because we’re birds! As birds, we’re actually pretty well known chewing up disgusting bugs and whatnot and then regurgitating them into mouths of our young. So if you think about it, this was actually a very tender and paternal move on my grandfather’s part, right up until he ate the fish. Just like he ate your parents. Oh no, I’ve said too much.”

Gil Thorp, 9/11/17

In slightly more realistic nephew-oriented scenarios, today’s Gil Thorp sets us up for the football season with a new character: Rick, who’s living with an uncle who he probably doesn’t know so well and who still thinks of him as a kid. What happened to Rick’s parents? I dunno, but after the decidedly dull summer plot, I am 100% ready for the story of the cargo-jeans-wearing Uncle Gary, who’s like a pageant mom only instead making his little daughter enter beauty pageants he’s making his teenage nephew enter talent shows down at the Elk’s Lodge, which he somehow thinks will jump-start a rocket ride to success for both of them.

Slylock Fox, 9/11/17

Most of these audience members are smiling because they’re excited to see a magic trick performed. Not Slylock, though! Slylock’s smiling because he knows this “magic trick” is going to suck, and that the rest of the crowd is going to be furious. “They’re gonna tear this clown apart,” he thinks, smugly.