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Slylock Fox, 8/19/24

Slylock is not alarmed because he knows about the square cube law, which dictates that this unnaturally enlarged mosquito’s body will not be able to support his own weight and he will soon die as his respiratory and circulatory systems collapse. We can only pray that Weirdly’s mechanical tinkering with the bug’s brain wiped away his conscious mind so that he doesn’t have to experience the excruciating process.

Mary Worth, 8/19/24

Remember Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus? Well, get ready for the upcoming Ed-Estelle wedding plotline, Veterinarians Think About Sad Dogs Who Want More Pills All Day, While Unpaid Veterinarian Assistants Spiral Into Bridezilla Mania And Possibly Set The Stage For Actual Fightfights At Their Weddings. I’m tentatively into it!

Gasoline Alley, 8/19/24

Sure, you might say that blogging about comics is “pretty easy all things considered” and “not a real job,” but have you considered the untold psychic damage I take every day, for your amusement, as any number of insane comics details burrow permanently into my brain? For instance, years from now, when my mind has turned to soup and I have forgotten the name and face of everyone I ever loved, I guarantee that if you visit me in whatever facility I’m warehoused in and whisper “Chief Meowrice” into my ear, the correct neuron sequence will fire and my mind’s eye will be presented with the image of this horrible French cat advertising pitchman. If I’m lucky, the experience will kill me.

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The Phantom, 8/18/24

A fun running bit in The Phantom is that we sometimes see original Phantom creator Lee Falk going about his day in pre-war Manhattan, musing about whatever direction the Phantom storyline is going to go in next. This can cause minor issues when it comes to suspension of disbelief, since the Phantom clearly takes place in the 21st century; I buy that Falk could’ve dreamed up plutocrats with their own private rocket companies, though independent post-colonial African states seems a bit more of a stretch. However, I have a harder time believing that our comics scribe neither keeps copies of his own strips nor subscribes to the newspapers that print them and needs help remembering plot points from a few days ago. I guess we really lost something when we replaced friendly one-man newspaper stand businesses with the Internet, although the Internet would also be happy to show Lee Falk last week’s strip, if he asked.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 8/18/24

This is in fact a repeat of a mystery that ran back in June of 2022. However, it’s been redrawn and recolored and — crucially, to establish the much worse vibes — has had dialogue added to show that Slylock has decied to dispense with even the flimsy pretense of rule of law that Forest Kingdom cops operate under and is about to dish out a brutal extrajudicial beating on his shrew nemesis.

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Slylock Fox, 7/8/24

For hundreds of thousands of years, between H. Sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and H. erectus, there were multiple human species coexisting on the planet. But they mostly lived in small bands separated from one another by great distances, and weren’t that different from one another (DNA evidence even shows that they occasionally interbred when they did meet up). At any rate, H. sapiens soon prevailed, and the differences between the various subgroups of our species, which we have historically placed so much importance on, are little more than a rounding error, genetically.

The animals of the Slylockverse seem to have taken over our institutions wholesale, but surely the most difficult part the transition was the idea of equality of all citizens before the law, something even we have trouble with. Here, the varying abilities and evolutionary adaptations of various animals become important aspects of police work, despite the fact that everyone is wearing clothes and, presumably, living most of the time on land. It’s confusing! Also confusing is the fact that Slylock is wasting his time on a minor harassment incident when we’re watching a straight-up murder happen in the background. Some animals are more equal than others, and fully aquatic animals are the least equal of all!

Gasoline Alley, 7/8/24

It appears that God has answered Walt’s prayers, and is about to save him from financial ruin by [squints] ensuring that his up-to-date homeowners insurance pays for the damages to his house, in accordance with the provisions of his policy documents. You might question how God was involved in that transaction. Well, He is Eternal and does not experience time as we do, so how do you suppose Walt came to buy that policy in the first place, huh? Makes you think.