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Spider-Man, 12/11/16

There’s a lot to love in today’s Spider-Man — MJ’s ridiculously impractical outfit, Peter getting his ass kicked, Peter making a superhuman effort to get off a dumb wisecrack before losing consciousness as a result of said ass-kicking — but it’s the next-to-last panel that will be long remembered as the comics panel of the year, maybe the decade. The sight of, among other things, an ice-cream sandwich, a slice of cake, a bottle of ketchup, a pot and a cup of coffee, a raw steak, and a delicious hoagie floating pell-mell in the general direction of Ronan, The Accuser is absolutely amazing, and I don’t even regret the fact that we don’t actually get to see how he processes all those foodstuffs into energy. Like, do they get absorbed through his skin, or does he just unhinge his jaw and they all fly down his gullet, or what? Surely Ronan, The Accuser doesn’t engage in anything so pedestrian as “chewing.”

Panel from Slylock Fox, 12/11/16

Shoutout to Slick Smitty for treating Max with utter and complete contempt in this little adventure. Having been presumably caught red-handed with evidence of his low-grade silver theft, Smitty has refused to even pretend that Max has the ability to impose some kind of legal consequences on him, and, rather than flee one step ahead of the actual law, has brought his latest hookup with him to enjoy the spectacle of Max running all over town on his tiny little legs and then futilely digging a hole in what I assume is a hilariously escalating state of agitation. Slylock does not look happy to have received this call.

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Spider-Man, 12/2/16

Ah ha, our new Newspaper Spider-Man plot is under way, and its antagonist is … Ronan, The Accuser! This is as good an opportunity as any for me to remind you that, despite the fact that I have made my name as a “comics guy” and have a love of Mary Worth and Mark Trail veering into dangerously unironic territory, I find most superhero comics extremely dopey, not least because they feature villains named things like “Ronan, The Accuser,” (and sorry, purists, I have decided that comma is a canonical part of his name and will be using it in every reference from now on). As moronic as Ronan, The Accuser seems and as dumb as his conflict with Spider-Man will inevitably be, at least you have to respect the franchise-driven media marketing strategy that brought him to newspapers everywhere. After all, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is coming out in a mere, uh, six months, and so we need to start building buzz now for when Ronan, The Accuser squares off against Peter Quill and our other heroes, just like he did in the first film, where they defeated him and he … uh … died? So he won’t be in the sequel? Man, Newspaper Spider-Man never misses an opportunity to not be useful in any way.

Marvin, 12/2/16

Haha, check out how grotesquely smug Jeff looks in panel three, because the only part of his life he has in order is strong-arming his wife into getting a job! This is some extremely relatable content right here. Marvin: come for the poop jokes, stay for the economic anxiety expressed through marital discomfort!

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Mary Worth, 11/22/16

My goodness, the corpse of Iris and Wilbur’s relationship is barely cold and look who just waltzed into her life? It’s a hunky fellow student who can match Wilbur’s chest hair but also sports luxurious locks and a roguish, manly stubble. Plus he knows that chivalry isn’t dead! You can tell because he refrained from saying “You dropped your extremely dopey hat!”

The Mary Worth house art style may have changed, but it’s still kind of impossible to tell how old anyone is, so I’m not sure if this handsome he-hunk is supposed to be an older student, like Iris, or if she’s just decided that if it’s OK for Wilbur to date her, it’s more than OK for her to date a twenty-year-old. Anyway, I like the smiles of approval the hip (?) young (????) couple of college students are bestowing upon them from the background.

Dick Tracy, 11/22/16

So, yeah, I don’t know how much detail I covered it in here, but the thing with Mysta Chimera is that she’s not actually the original dead Moon Maid who was Dick’s daughter-in-law, but is rather some other lady who was genetically modified to think that she’s Moon Maid by someone who I forgot for purposes I no longer remember. Anyway! Turns out she’s the weird old gangster dude’s daughter? Mostly I wanted to show you this strip because I find it funny how much more Mindy Ermine looks like a terrifying space alien than Mysta Chimera does.

Spider-Man, 11/22/16

Definitely one of my favorite parts of Newspaper Spider-Man is Peter’s reactions of entirely unmoored horror whenever his wife suggests perfectly nice things. “Drive to California? But … we’re so close to Premier Silver status on United! That means complimentary Economy Plus seating as long as seats are available at check-in! This is a disaster for us!”