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Slylock Fox, 3/21/16

Ha, Slylock, this is pretty much the lamest anti-drug campaign I’ve ever seen. “No!” he shouts at the glassy-eyed hordes, eager to hand fists full of money over to Wanda. “Don’t you understand? She isn’t using honey at all!” The animals stumble back to their homes, or just lie down on the grass, chemically fueled happiness shooting through their veins. Slylock runs from prone form to prone form. “Honey is created by bees in hives! At best, she’s using honey that bees created after gathering nectar from lily and cactus flowers. At best!” Nobody listens. Nobody hears. They’re thinking happy thoughts! Nothing but happy thoughts! Your honey talk isn’t happy, Slylock, and they can’t even hear it.

Gasoline Alley, 3/21/16

Good news! Gasoline Alley’s Mildly Irritating Appliance Salesman Guy, who you might remember from strips like these, is back! And he’s a … police officer? Sure, why not! I don’t really understand why Gasoline Alley thinks Frank Nelson’s character from Jack Benny’s 1940’s radio show is someone that modern people yearn to see in cartoon form, but you could argue that if The Simpsons did it, it can’t be the worst idea in the world. You could also argue that this is a comic strip that just wrapped a multi-month story arc about scrapbooking, so clearly nobody involved gives a shit about what you or I or anyone else thinks!

Crock, 3/21/16

Since Crock is nominally set in early 20th century French colonial North Africa, if I had to identify the religion held by most of its characters, I’d have said “indifferent Catholics.” But clearly, in its decades wandering the desert, the Lost Patrol has fallen into some odd polytheism.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/21/15

“Your body is strong and robust and will go on living for years as your brain turns to goo and you lose every shred of the memories and personality that makes you you! This will only be a problem for your loved ones and people who talk to you, though, and I’m gonna stop talking to you right … about … now.”

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Mary Worth, 3/14/16

Oh, did you think Mary Worth had reached its apex with “Mary and Jeff tell the waiter at their favorite restaurant that the restaurant where he works is their favorite restaurant?” Not by a long shot, bucko. Here, enjoy “Mary and Jeff stand on a deserted boardwalk and talk about what makes New York so exciting. Is it all the things that happen there? Yes, probably.” You know where you wouldn’t see people wasting time with this kind of blah blah? New York City! People are too busy hustling and bustling to engage in this kind of self-reflection. (Ha ha, just kidding, New Yorkers are contractually obligated to turn towards the camera and say “Only in New York! The greatest city in the world!” when anything even vaguely interesting happens to them.)

Slylock Fox, 3/14/16

Hmm, as I read the details of this scenario, it sounds like Shady’s explanation of events is entirely plausible. Maybe another truck swerved into his lane and, technically, the traffic in that lane was supposed to be going in a direction other than the one in which Shady was driving. Who’s to say? Look at how eager Shady is to tell his tale to Slylock. Does that look like a shrew who’s committed a crime?

Dick Tracy, 3/14/16

This Dick Tracy storyline in Cuba is still happening, I guess? Today Dick is holding a bad guy at gunpoint and forcing him to piece through a pile of rubble by hand to find his friends, who are either terribly injured or dead. Dick doesn’t seem that broken up about it, though! At least he’s finally getting to force somebody to do something at gunpoint.

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Slylock Fox, 3/8/16

Guys, we have a lot of fun here on joshreads dot com talking about the Slylock Fox backstory, when the animal uprising destroyed human civilization and brought the Before Time to an abrupt and violent end. But let’s just enjoy today’s six differences outside of that context, and appreciate it for what it is: a doubled depiction of mustachio’d man with a thousand-mile stare selling balloons, bright red balloons, each bearing a frowny face of the sort that would appeal to only the gloomiest and gothiest. But then — one drifts away! And smiles as it drifts to the skies! Here is the secret seventh difference: in the left panel, the balloon-man happened to have one smiley balloon, and that happened to be the one he lost his grip on; in the right, he has enslaved a race of silent but emotive balloon-beings, and one of them has finally managed to break free.

Gasoline Alley, 3/8/16

Speaking of the uncanny, Gasoline Alley seems to have shifted from an incredibly long and dull plot about scrapbooking to an incredibly unnerving plot about animals who can talk but only one little boy can understand them and also a forest fire burned down their home and now they want revenge. “I understand,” the owl says. “Your human justice system doesn’t consider us animals worthy of attention or protection. Fortunately, we have razor-sharp claws and teeth and can impose our own kind of justice on those who wronged us.”

Funky Winkerbean, 3/8/16

For reasons I cannot understand, the little girls who visit Crankshaft’s elderly, lonely neighbor and are extremely literal minded about everything have now been introduced into Funky Winkerbean, and apparently this was important enough to really highlight the weird chronological discontinuity between the strips by making them ten years older. Anyway, they’re making friends! Like with that 45-year-old dude who’s always trying to have sex with high school girls but the administration lets him hang around anyway, for some reason!