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Funky Winkerbean, 5/12/14

A true artist can take a hacky, overdone concept and still manage to bend it to the service of their larger project. In the case of Funky Winkerbean, that hacky concept is “ha ha, exercise sure is difficult if you’re old and out of shape,” and that project, to which the strip is totally committed, is injecting a dose of soul-wrenching ennui into the funny pages each and every day of the week. What could’ve been just another joke about a guy whose medically mandated time on the treadmill takes longer than he’d like becomes a metaphor for life as an unwinnable race, run in sweaty silence and solitude, increasingly exhausting and yet not moving you forward a single inch. You guys are looking at the work of a master here, and I hope you appreciate it.

Slylock Fox, 5/12/14

Call me a speciesist if you must, but I usually have a hard time summoning up anything but sympathy for Slick Smitty as he occasionally violates the laws of an animal-run polity he neither understands nor respects. Here he is, with his hands terribly injured — probably he made an ill-advised attempt at offering a human-style handshake greeting to some sapient beast with sharp, unretractable claws on its forepaws — and he’s been put up in what’s essentially, let’s face it, a veterinary hospital. So sure, he wandered up the corridors, no doubt reeking of animal urine, found a basket of apples, and, yeah, he took one or two, carefully cradling them in his bandaged hands so as not to exacerbate the pain in his lacerated palms. There was some goat nearby, bleating, but, whatever, there were lots of apples in that basket. There were more apples where those came from. Do you know who first cultivated apples? Do you know who saw a tiny, sour wild fruit, growing on trees on the slopes of a Central Asian mountain range, and realized that, with patience and generations of selective breeding, eventually you’d have something juicy and succulent and sweet, growing on acre after acre of carefully tended trees? It sure wasn’t fucking goats, I’ll tell you that much.

Hagar the Horrible, 5/12/14

“Battle fatigue” is an archaic term for the collective symptoms and psychological reactions to the horrors of combat that we now refer to as a variety of post-traumatic stress disorder. So, even though Hagar spends his days burning and looting villages and murdering and enslaving the innocent, know that he wakes up every night covered in sweat and has intrusive, debilitating thoughts about the awful violence he’s seen. Centuries before the advent of the mental health profession, his only recourse is to drown his sorrows with alcohol and share his feelings with another man whose chosen profession involves endless, endless gore and horror.

Apartment 3-G, 5/12/14

We’ve been having fun for weeks now making fun of the pink Ann Taylor Loft turtleneck sweater that Tommie’s been wearing nonstop ever since she got to Jack’s large animal vet practice/cult compound, but I think this is the first time we’ve seen that she’s also been wearing white pants? This is basically the perfect outfit in which to shovel horse poop all day.

Luann, 5/12/14

In more proof that Luann seems determined to actually change things up and send its cast to college next year, it seems that beloved Pitts English teacher Mr. Fogarty will be retiring! Would you like to enjoy some more hilarious Fogarty Flashbacks™? Well, you’re going to have to check them out on the Web at LuannComic dot com, because they’re just too hot for newspapers.

Dennis the Menace, 5/12/14

It’s too bad Dennis’s spaceship doesn’t have room for a kitchen, because probably he’s going to starve to death on about day six of his mission.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 4/13/14

Yes, the pin is on the wrong side, proving that she took the picture in the mirror! Also, Dabney Dog isn’t actually in the picture, so even if it hadn’t been taken in the mirror, it would prove nothing? Look, Cassandra, I know it’s frustrating that Sly refuses to get a smartphone so you can’t send him all the hottt selfies you take, but this elaborate scheming is not the way to get him to pay attention to you, OK?

Also, I’m pretty sure that the theoretical mirror that Cassandra took this picture in would have to be more or less where the viewer is looking into this scene? There’s something profound there about the fourth wall and how this strip merely “mirrors” our own prejudices back at us (prejudices about sexy cats and the foxes who won’t love them back).

Six Chix, 4/13/14

I’m very curious about how the bitcoin aficionado community will take this cartoon! On the one hand, their favorite fake internet nerd money has now been name-checked in the Sunday comics, surely the most mainstream of American cultural institutions. Also, while comparing bitcoin to the “magic beans” of the Jack in the Beanstalk story might sound dismissive, we should remember that Jack’s beans really were magical, and indeed did help make him rich in an unexpected way, so that’s also ultimately a positive. However, I’m sure they’re quite upset at the vulgarism “bitcoins.” THE PLURAL OF BITCOIN IS “BITCOIN,” PEOPLE, JUST LIKE IT IS WITH “EURO,” UGH, GET IT STRAIGHT

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Slylock Fox, 3/24/14

Yes, yes, I’ve covered it all here exhaustively: at some point in the history of the Slylockverse, most species of animal abruptly achieved sapience and for the most part displaced Homo sapiens from its previous dominance of the ecosystem, with only a few genetically abnormal remnants like Wanda Witch surviving. Normally I’m obsessed with the question of when and how this Change occurred, but it’s worth contemplating some of the more subtle effects on the transformed animals themselves. For instance: just about every creature has a survival instinct, of course, and most animals will fight or flee when their dim minds understand that their health or life is in immediate danger. But only the most intelligent species have the time or capability to contemplate death in the abstract, to see grey hairs and smile lines in the mirror and realize with icy certainty that they herald the looming end. Would a bear in a forest in our world, or a beaver happily building a dam by instinct in some pristine lake, feel the slightest urge to trade some food or other precious item for a potion that would reverse the aging process? Of course not. And yet we humans understand all too well why these gullible beasts are willing to fork over hard-earned cash for the fraudulent promise of eternal youth. In the Garden of Eden parable, we imagine that humanity came into its own when it suddenly understood good and evil. But perhaps the truth is that awareness — and terror — of death is the true mark of a species that’s graduated to adulthood.

Wizard of Id, 3/24/14

I guess “Monkdonald’s” represents one of the Wizard of Id’s occasional acknowledgements that it notionally takes place in a vaguely medieval setting — because, they had, like, monks and stuff back then? Get it? Anyway, as a true indication of how half-assed everything about this is, the Monkdonald’s Happy Meal analogue is called a “Slappy Meal”, because it, like, rhymes and stuff? Get it? It so offends me that not the tiniest bit of effort has gone into making some joke mashing up McDonald’s product offerings and the golden age of European monasticism that I’m going to refuse to do it for them, even though making anachronistic jokes about monks is literally one of my favorite things in the world.

Heathcliff, 3/24/14

Is Heathcliff perhaps not quite the unstoppable badass that we’ve imagined? First we find out that he kisses his parole officer’s ass, and now we see that his suburb has been invaded and annexed by skunks and all he can do is watch in mute horror.