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Slylock Fox, 7/3/17

Hmm, I think there’s a lot of backstory here that Slylock isn’t getting in to. QUESTION: If Holly Hippo just wrote this recipe down last night, why is it that she can’t remember any of it today? ANSWER: It’s because she was copying it from a source she no longer has access to — possibly the closely guarded family cookbook of a competitor in the big pie-baking contest coming up! I’m assuming there’s a big pie-baking contest coming up because otherwise why isn’t there “enough time to find the thief”? Enough time for what? What’s the deadline here? Dinner? Is Holly Hippo having a freakout because she can’t cook her stolen pie recipe for tonight’s dinner? There are other desserts for tonight and other nights for dessert, Holly. Hold it together, for the love of Christ.

UPDATE: Whoooops, I somehow failed to see the first sentence of this caption, lol

Mary Worth, 7/3/17

This strip doesn’t advance our current plot at all (unless the photo Mary bought was of Derek and Esme kissing and she plans to use it for blackmail) but obviously I couldn’t pass over Toby in her ’80s finery. The thing I wonder: did Toby know in advance that there would be an ’80s dance party on the boat (possibly it was part of the endless promotional material she browsed online) and pack those clothes, which she still owned from her youth in the early-Madonna era Lower East Side? Or does the cruise line just own a bunch of ’80s gear and let passengers wear them for theme nights, then let them keep them because, ew, cruise passenger dance sweat, gross.

Spider-Man, 7/3/17

Aunt May! Threatening to harm yourself unless your partner makes a grand emotional commitment is a classic act of emotional manipulation and abuse! YOU IN DANGER GIRL

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Mark Trail, 6/29/17

Oh, I bet you thought that three months ago, when Mark Trail paused to do some jokes about a mysterious incident Mark and Johnny got up to “a long time ago” at the “Water-World Theme Park,” it was all just a silly aside, a wink to those of us who know about how Mark’s various dramas often leave a trail of destruction in their wake. Well, guess what: it’s turned out to be extremely key to this storyline instead, actually! Since Mark rented his car under Lesley’s name (is this something you can … actually do? just rent a car in the name of someone whose ID you do not possess? guess they’re still pretty trusting at the rental facilities in America’s rural heartland), this has led the FBI straight to the Water-World Theme Park, which upgraded its name’s orthography to WaterWorld right around the time they ditched their popular but increasingly controversial “poke a captive orca with a cattle prod” exhibit. Anyway, this will result in Mark being … freed, somehow? Probably because Lesley Joyce has dealt with his car-destroying antics before, giving her an uncanny ability to figure out his next move, as Mark well knows. The Water-World Incident took place years ago, when Lesley was just a simple Customer Experience Enhancement Agent in charge of cleaning up the dolphin poop; now she’s climbed the corporate ladder all the way to Vice President of Octopus and Squid, but an encounter with Mark Trail is something you never forget.

Slylock Fox, 6/29/17

You know, maybe I’ve got it all wrong about how the Animals seized control of the world of Slylock Fox. Maybe there was no violent revolution, no singular Event when the beasts achieved sapience all at once. Maybe humanity mostly died out in a series of great pandemics, started when pseudoscientific beliefs convinced people to abandon immunization and other techniques that had kept the microbes at bay. Here we see the opening stages of the Great Die-Off, when affected household are required, under the emergency authority granted to the Plaguemaster General, to identify the diseases present inside. The dog just sits and watches, waiting for a new ecological niche to open.

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Crankshaft, 6/4/17

Earlier this week we got treated to yet another hint that Crankshaft is trapped in temporal amber, always on the verge of death but never quite getting there. That’s really something for comics obsessives like me and the readers of this blog to contemplate, though. Today’s strip gets back to the simple, core message the Funkyverse has for casual readers turning to the funny pages for a wistful smile and a little escapism: all of us are going to die, and some of us sooner than others.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 6/4/17

Solution — Count Weirdly still has a pre-animalpocalypse mindset. He clings to the old ways, where there was a hierarchy of species, with his own, of course, on top. “Max?” he thinks, typing various combinations into the password field with no effect. “Is Max his pet?” Sly and Max smile at him with mingled pity and contempt. This is the new age. The standings of various species have been dramatically leveled, and Slylock chose that outdated password hint to remind him of the social order he now serves. His password is “NO GODS NO MASTERS”.

Panel from The Family Circus, 6/4/17

“There, I just summarized the whole long boring sermon for you! Now let’s go to the dog track. Don’t tell your parents.”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 6/4/17

Well, let’s just see what these adorable bunnies are up to in this whimsical comic strip and AAAUGH AAUGH AAAUGH THEY’VE AMPUTATED THEIR OWN LEGS IN ORDER TO IMPROVE THEIR FORTUNE AND NOW THEY’RE HAVING REGRETS ABOUT IT, WHAT HELL-NIGHTMARE IS THIS