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Mary Worth, 9/28/18

One of my very favorite things that sometimes happens on this blog is when I make an outrageous prediction about the future course of some soap opera strip’s plot that then almost immediately comes true! So yes, Mr. Wynter really did spend more on his dog’s grave than on his wife’s. At least Bella’s monument is relatively tasteful, with Bella depicted as she was in life, wearing her adorable bow tie, and not as some kind of terrifying supernatural winged cat chimera like whoever’s buried in the plot just behind her. The second panel is great, because it shows what Bella would see if she were buried alive and had like a little hole in her casket attached to a periscope or something.

Six Chix, 9/28/18

Look, one of the advantages of having a multi-artist production like Six Chix is that you get a variety of perspectives and voices, so I’m as confused and disappointed by “big horny animal week” as everybody else.

Spider-Man, 9/28/18

“Say, Danny, have you ever considered using the incredible privilege and authority you wield in our society to better people’s lives, instead of putting on a mask and punching people unusually hard? Just spitballing here!”

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Spider-Man, 9/25/18

The thing about the super-hero genre is that it features lots of high-stakes combat but also (sorry, Mopey Pete) is mostly marketed to children, so there’s a bit of tension about exactly how far we should go in depicting the consequences of said high-stakes combat, and specifically the consequences on human bodies. Usually the way they get around this is by having a lot of the battling taking the form of just people punching each other, in a super fashion, and we can kind of gloss over that because punching someone out doesn’t really hurt them, shattered organs and traumatized brains aside. But Colleen Wing is wading into this mass of bad guys swinging around a god-damned sword, which by right ought to be leaving behind a trail of severed limbs and thugs writhing on the floor as they die from massive blood loss. Maybe she’s just … bad at swords? Despite swords being her whole thing? Truly, a worthy partner to Spider-Man!

Mark Trail, 9/25/18

Wow, I had assumed that this artifact-smuggling ring was full of dweebuses and losers like sleepy, drooly Jo(s)e and glasses-and-polo-shirt-tucked-into-jeans dude, who I guess is named “Pablo.” But now we finally get to meet the extremely cool member of their criminal gang: a bad-ass, motorcycle-riding, headband-and-skull-belt wearing dude who gets called in when the scheme finally gets to the point where they have to … murder some children? I just want to emphasize to everyone reading at home that murdering children isn’t cool. It’s just that, if your gang has to kill a couple of kids, that’s something you’re going to want your coolest member to do.

Shoe, 9/25/18

The only corrupt politician we’ve ever seen in Shoe is Senator Belfrey, who, despite what I assume have been the best efforts of the Treetop Tribune and its crusading staff of investigative reporters, has remained in office since the strip began running in 1977. No wonder Shoe always seems so uptight!

Beetle Bailey, 9/25/18

“I want this locker full of severed human feet by 0900 tomorrow! Get it together, soldier!”

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Hi and Lois, 9/22/18

Ha ha, there’s nothing that says “I love my son” like telling your wife as she walks by, completely within his earshot, “Look, I’m sitting right next to him here on the couch! You were wrong when you said I didn’t love him!” But really, the big shoutout in this strip has to go to Chip, who’s alternating between looking at his phone and reading that magazine he has draped over the arm of the couch. He doesn’t want to be there any more than Hi does!

Spider-Man, 9/22/18

J. Jonah Jameson of course discarded the traditional obituary section years ago, merging it with the wedding announcements to create a weekly “Life Moments” supplement that you have to pay to be featured in. But I assume that if Spider-Man died from some combination of being shot multiple times and suffocating from poison gas, it’d be a gleeful banner headline, for what’s that’s worth.

Marvin, 9/22/18

“Since American suburbia is bereft of truly public spaces, I thought we were going to wander around this commercial center merely for the purpose of experiencing the slow passage of time towards our inevitable and meaningless deaths in a location other than our home, for once. But you entered a series of stores with the intention of exchanging money for goods! What a twist!”