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Slylock Fox, 9/7/13

Once again, we have a Slylock Six Differences that offers a glimpse at the moment when our planet stopped being a human-dominated ecosystem. Today we see the early days of the Great Animal Rising, when the formerly “lesser” life forms still felt a need to hide their new intelligence and powers from their human oppressors. This scene is interesting because it shows that even from the outset, animal society wasn’t unified, presaging the endless petty animal-on-animal crime we see in the present-day Slylockverse. Clearly the cat-dog rivalry has survived both species’ transition to sapience, even in the face of a greater threat. “Him! He’s the one who’s walking around on his hind legs and using tools and … um … I mean, meow?”

Funky Winkerbean, 9/7/13

That was a nice attempt to slip some Jesus into your public high school English lesson, Les. Too bad computers are their gods now.

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Slylock Fox, 9/2/13

Despite his unnatural skin tone, I’ve more or less accepted Count Weirdly as one of Planet Slylock’s few remaining humans. But his “cousin” Creepy seems significantly genetically divergent, and not just in superficial areas like coloring. Was Weirdly performing illegal genetic experiments not just on the animals that ended up rising up to seize control of the planet, but on his own kin? Or does he grow mutated clones of himself in rows of ghastly tanks, deep beneath his castle-lair? Creepy might suffer from physical abnormalities, but his unnaturally large head and today’s little drama implies that he may actually benefit from enhanced intelligence: he’s already packed and ready to get out of town before yet another classically pointless Weirdly caper ends in failure. “High five, cuz, we did it! I, uh, gotta go.”

Luann, 9/2/13

The huge majority of comic strips exist in “comic strip time,” in which their characters all remain the same age relative to each other for years or decades and unmoored in absolute time, which gives rise to unsettling results like Ted Forth being the same age as my dad when I was a kid but then wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt several decades later. You also have strips like Doonesbury and pre-time-freeze For Better Or For Worse in which characters would age a year for every calendar year of real time.

Then you have the strips that go through a sort of comics punctuated equilibrium, with long periods of stasis and then sudden leaps forwards. The most famous example of this is of course Funky Winkerbean and its various time jumps, but Luann seems to be in this boat as well. Luann was in junior high for the first 14 years or so of the strip’s existence, then was suddenly aged into high school in 1999. Now, another 14 years later, we learn that she’s actually starting her senior year. The question is: are we ready for a world where Luann is in college? Am I? Are you? Is she? I’m not sure any of us are.

Momma, 9/2/13

Meanwhile, one strip that has zero continuity or aging or narrative advancement for its characters is Momma, which is why today’s installment is especially bizarre, seeing as it contains a major life change for one of its characters and nothing that could be even vaguely construed as a “joke.” Will Momma suddenly be transformed into MaryLou, That Dizzy Dame Of The Skies, now that strip management has finally looked at the results of the 1973 focus group showing that flight attendants are more appealing to audiences than controlling, passive-aggressive mothers and their unlikeable children?

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/26/13

Oh goodie, it’s been far too long since the main characters in Funky Winkerbean have faced an existential threat that will provide them with an opportunity to wax self-righteously! Since many of Westview’s teachers depend on these subjects’ funding for their livelihood, we should be treated to a delightful melange of “Our children won’t receive the cultural education they need” and “We will be forced to beg for change and live in a cardboard box under the elevated highway on the outskirts of town.”

Much as I support full funding for arts education, I do feel it necessary to point out that lunch is somewhat more important in the hierarchy of needs than the other subjects facing the axe. Don’t worry, teachers, they’ll be enough cash to restore your classes, once the weaker students have been strategically starved to death!

Gil Thorp, 8/26/13

Sorry I sort of dropped the ball on the end of the Gil Thorp summer wrestling storyline, everybody! Gil and Herk had their wrestling match and everyone had a good time and then as he headed out of town Herk called Gil by his real name, implying that his tragic dementia was actually just a wrestling angle and thus bringing the blurred line between artifice and reality out of the squared circle and in to everyday life. But now summer’s just about over, and two local gals are on a mission … a mission for man tip. Haha, just kidding, I’m deliberately misconstruing the dialogue in the third panel so it sounds like they’re talking about a penis, but really if you give your kid a name that is or can be shortened to “Tip” you need to be prepared for this sort of outcome.

Slylock Fox, 8/26/13

Slylock Fox has never been a more shameful and transparent shill for the universal surveillance state than it is today. Remember, everyone, evil-doers might be holding adorable penguins captive in horrifying basement freezer-prisons! That’s why the staff of utility companies need to monitor everyone’s energy usage and pass any anomalies on to meddling fox-cops and/or heavily armed SWAT teams, for freedom.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/26/13

Ha ha, it’s funny because Hootin’ Holler is so impoverished and isolated from mainstream American life that its residents are wholly ignorant of basic civic infrastructure that most of us take for granted!