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Slylock Fox, 1/14/15

I’ve spent literally years contemplating the strange, animal-dominated world of Slylock Fox, wondering about the terrible, transformative Event that separates it from ours. The lens I’ve seen things through has usually been scientific, but what if I should be thinking theologically instead? In the Genesis flood narrative, God famously promises Noah that He won’t destroy the world with a flood again, which is pretty specific and seems to leave some loopholes. The spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep” famously warns “God gave Noah the rainbow sign/ no more water/ the fire next time,” but God’s ways aren’t necessarily what we would expect. What if God chose to cleanse Earth of awful humanity by simply moving his favor down a rung to the animals, transforming them into beings capable of both moral reasoning and displacing us? If that was the goal — if Slylock Fox’s anthropomorphic beasts were an attempt at resetting the clock and creating a new Eden — then today’s strip reminds us that the fatal flaw, the indelible link between knowledge and sin, was baked into the design from the beginning.

Dick Tracy, 1/14/15

Aw, it’s funny because patriarchy dictates that detective prowess, like names, can only be transmitted down the male line! And also because none of these clowns are going to be the world’s greatest detective. Batman is the world’s greatest detective. Seriously, wouldn’t it be funny if they did a Batman movie where Batman was dressed up in a rubber bat suit but instead of punching bad guys and driving around in a tank-car he just looked for clues with a magnifying glass? It’d be a lot more entertaining than whatever they’ve got planned for Ben Affleck, that’s for sure.

Heathcliff, 1/14/15

Sure, you could look at this as Heathcliff just reusing the exact same joke twice in six days. But I choose to imagine that Heathcliff has been clawing viciously at the bars of the bird’s cage for nearly a week now, while his owner-family does nothing, leaving the bird to crazed with terror but still clinging to the household etiquette rules.

Apartment 3-G, 1/14/15

“Meanwhile, at two in the morning, after having been exiled from their home by Margo’s drug-powered mania, the girls wander the streets of Manhattan (?), talking to each other vaguely.”

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Hi and Lois, 1/5/15

Oh, man, those knowing looks Hi and Lois are giving each other in panel one are chilling me to my very core. What erotic scenarios have played out in the Flagston household that include food and praying? Lois’s deflated expression in panel two confirms everyone’s longheld belief that the bevy of Flagston children mainly exists to get in the way of the title characters’ varied and active sex life.

Mark Trail, 1/5/15

I’ve never murdered anyone or been murdered, but just based on what I know about humans and how they operate, probably if you’re actually going to kill a few people in cold blood for money-making reasons you don’t necessarily spend a lot of time telling them about it, right? And the people who do keeping jawing on the subject maybe aren’t the most serious about the whole affair. What I’m trying to say is that, as a rule, you shouldn’t up and smack some armed dude who’s planning to kill you, but Cherry may not be completely off-base on her ability to get away with this here.

Slylock Fox, 1/5/15

Hmm, let’s just check out the solution here and “Slylock used his sense of taste” OH MY GOD HE LICKED IT, HE LICKED THE BOAT, I know he’s a fox and all but it sure reduces his Clever Detective cred now that we know he goes around licking things, right? “Used his sense of taste,” honestly.

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Spider-Man, 12/10/14

Sequels sure can be tricky! You need to build on an original story that’s beloved enough to merit a second installment and honor what people liked about it while still pushing forward into new territory. We don’t know yet exactly how the fascinating script for Marvella 2 manages to pull this off, but since this Newspaper Spider-Man plot is in fact itself a sequel to a storyline for 2006, we can get a good sense of how you should balance the old and the new. Back then, Marvella’s nemesis was being played by an older actress instead of the director’s young ingenue daughter, and she was angry about having been beat out for the title role by Mary Jane after auditioning for it, rather than actually getting the part and then being angry because she was displaced by Mary Jane when she became available. See, totally different! Similarly, I believe that, at the climax of this story, rather than being knocked unconscious with a lead pipe by a butler, Spider-Man will be bludgeoned by, let’s say, a special effects artist, using something you might find around a movie set.

Momma, 12/10/14

We already knew that Momma’s dedication to passive-aggression is intense, but she’s really taking things to the next level by having a near life-size photo of Francis in his Boy Scout uniform hanging on the wall just to serve as a prompt for her to belittle him by bringing up his past humiliations.

Slylock Fox, 12/10/14

5) Did your Comics Curmudgeon manage to successfully resist the almost overwhelming urge to Google Image Search “bats with six-foot wingspans” because he knew the results would haunt his nightmares for weeks? Answer: Very true!