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Family Circus, 3/23/13

You know that I don’t usually wish good things for the Keane Kids, but my heart does go out to them a little bit here, imagining them paging through book after book with gritty, morally complex endings in which love fails to conquer all, good doesn’t triumph over evil, and ambiguous characters try and fail to grapple with a world they never made. But still, PJ and Jeffy look insufferably smug as they prepare themselves for the sweet, sweet fairy tale action they have coming to them. “Aw, yeah, in this book the attractive and virtuous are going to defeat the hell out of their ugly enemies, who are cruel to them for reasons that are never fully examined! Can’t wait for the wedding at the end, heteronormativity rules!”

Wizard of Id, 3/23/13

Huh, I guess I’m not surprised exactly that the Wizard of Id is the first newspaper comic strip to depict an actual steaming turd, but it wouldn’t have been my first guess. (First guess: Marvin, obviously.)

Mary Worth, 3/23/13

“Enough of this coy literary flirting! Are you two going to fuck or what?”

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Spider-Man, 3/15/13

Great things are happening over at Kingpin Laboratories! Under the inspiring guidance of the company CEO, Kingpin researchers are producing breathtaking innovations in neuroscience — with potentially profitable real-world implications! Meanwhile, across town, a freelance photographer manages, with some effort, to remember the name of a lawyer.

Blondie, 3/15/13

So it turns out that Dagwood’s inability to understand basic finance is just a symptom of his retreat into magical thinking when confronted with scarcity of any sort.

Ziggy, 3/15/13

Scram, Ziggy! Rats want to use your house for fucking!

Apartment 3-G, 3/15/13

Wow, darkness is falling on the city … pretty abruptly there, huh? I mean, in panel one it looks to be about mid-afternoon and then Margo expresses affection for another human and then an inky eternal shadow descends over new york, there is no escape and it is so so cold

Family Circus, 3/15/13

“All this suburban bourgeois bullshit that you think is important? It’s like you’re smothering my soul with a pillow! Just thought I’d let you know.”

Wizard of Id, 3/15/13

Ha ha, it’s funny because the dragon likes to eat his own poop!

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Momma, 2/21/13

It’s funny because Momma is down to her last five bucks and her son is a thief.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/21/13

Many, many comic strips have terrible dialogue, but the dialogue in Funky Winkerbean and sister strip Crankshaft is terrible in its own unique way — not from lack of craft or attention (Hi, Crock!), but its very opposite. Stare at a simple line like “How’s your room?” long enough and you’ll start to ask yourself if readers will remember the characters are traveling, or maybe think the question is whether they have enough room, say, to swing their arms or something? Then it’s down the rabbit-hole: “How’s your hotel room?” could be any hotel, so let’s go with “How’s your room in the hotel” to make it clear this Esteemed Figure is staying at the main convention hotel and not some off-strip dive, then plaster “Music Educ Asso  t” on the wall for good measure. Despite all that work — no, because of it — you wind up with overwrought phrases that seem unambiguous, but which no actual human would ever utter: “solo car date”, “dead man’s singles”, or “space heater in the basement” (for “water heater”).

More fundamental is the Quip Fail at the heart of this strip. Hotel ratings use stars, not letters, so “B-flat hotel” makes no sense even coming from a band leader Music Educator. My guess is that the joke started out star-related — maybe Sousa’s The Stars and Stripes Forever? — and then got reworked into its present form. But if “B-flat hotel” is really your punchline, own it, don’t bury it in these wads of bumf. Put it at the end, where punchlines go: “I won’t be staying there much, so I don’t mind a B-flat hotel.” And spare us Beardo’s in-strip affirmation of your character’s dubious wit. Exactly.

Wizard of Id, 2/21/13

It’s funny because it’s not golf.

Crankshaft, 2/21/13

Got that? A joke. Now laugh, God damn you!

— Uncle Lumpy