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Family Circus, 11/16/17

I have to admit that I’m extremely hung up on Billy proposing to go eat at the home of someone named “Corbin.” Corbin? Is this a thing that Americans are naming their children now? I of course immediately turned to the indispensable Baby Name Wizard for answers, and learned that Corbin has seen a huge uptick in usage recently, beginning the 1980s (presumably with the fame of L.A. Law heartthrob Corbin Bernsen) but really hitting new heights in the 2010s, so … it’s possible? Still, that’s all relative: in 2011, 475 out of every million boys born in the U.S. were named Corbin, whereas William, which has plummeted in popularity from its late 19th century peak, is still bestowed upon boys around ten times as often.

It’s also possible that this is a reference to British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and Billy represents young people turning away from neoliberal austerity policies and towards the promises of socialism. The name “Corbin” derives from the Old French word for “crow,” so we can’t rule out the possibility that Billy is has joined a bird-cult and feels unstoppably drawn to the great Nest of his sinister Raven God, to feed.

Mark Trail, 11/16/17

Dick Tracy just doesn’t serve up graphic, violent deaths on the regular anymore, so it’s good that Mark Trail has stepped into the breach, showing us a man about to be horribly killed by a tornado. Looking forward to him hurtling downward, screaming in terror, his ponytail flapping wildly behind him, until he makes a neat, viscera-filled crater on the ground of ghost town, right in front of Mark and everybody else.

Crock, 11/16/17

Crock: The Strip Where The Cacti Don’t Fuck Anymore™

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Beetle Bailey, 11/15/17

It’s really pretty hard to figure out what the saddest thing going on here is. Is it that the Army can’t accommodate the needs of its older officers and their touchy digestive/urinary systems? Is it that General Halftrack is so thoroughly dedicated to his job that he’s willing to piss and/or shit himself in public? Is it that he’s decided that wearing five adult diapers simultaneously is a good strategy, even though a little thought on the logistics of this would reveal that you’d pretty quickly need to get somewhere private to remove some of the layers, which negates the whole purpose of the move? Or is it that Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC feels a need to compete with Marvin in the piss play/scat humor space? Whatever you choose, I think we should all give kudos to the artist, who managed to sympathetically depict the true pathos and anxiety on General Halftrack’s face while simultaneously giving him a comically large diaper-padded ass.

Marvin, 11/15/17

Speaking of Marvin, it’s not true that all the strip’s characters are required to stew in their own feces or urine in order to amuse this feature’s dedicated readership. Technically, their contract just says they need to occasionally “soil themselves.”

Funky Winkerbean, 11/15/17

Oh, good news, beloved embittered dead comics book artist Phil Holt has now joined Dead Saint Lisa in Funkyverse purgatory, where you just follow your loved ones around all the time, even if that means you have to watch them fool around in a car. Since Phil’s only loved ones were his precious comics covers, he’ll be following them to wherever they’re gonna get auctioned off to, I guess. Anyway, I’ve always hoped that one of the benefits of moving on to the next plane of existence is that you get a certain perspective on and insight into our mortal world, but it’s tough to watch Phil learn that comic books really are for nerds.

Family Circus, 11/5/17

Ha ha, Jeffy has misunderstood something as criticism and is absolutely furious about it, and is seeking reassurance from an authority figure. He’s gonna go far in life, this one!

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/14/17

Oh, hey, remember those comic book covers Darin inherited? Well, he’s decided to auction them off to benefit Lisa’s Legacy Fund! The comic book covers are incredibly valuable, naturally, I don’t think we even need to question that, even though the embittered artist who left them to Darin died in poverty, so probably the money they’ll raise at this big auction will finally put the Lisa’s Legacy Fund over the top and they’ll cure breast cancer. Anyway, while today’s dialogue is a real treat for fans of word-sequences that no human being would ever utter, don’t let it distract you from the colorist’s error in panel two that produced a nightmare mass of writhing hands sticking out of Darin’s torso.

Judge Parker, 11/14/17

Huh, is Randy going to become a prison-reform radical as a result of his wife’s imprisonment? Is he going to bring down the carceral state … from the inside? I’ll just point out that, while April has some justified beefs with the prison-industrial complex, I don’t see her questioning, say, the government’s employment of an army of shadowy assassins operating across a dizzying array of intelligence agencies.

Spider-Man, 11/14/17

Man, when I filled out that survey last month about what I wanted to see more of in future Spider-Man storylines and checked the box next to “Spider-Man walking and/or web-slinging into things, painfully and face-first,” I didn’t think I’d get results so quickly!

Mary Worth, 11/14/17

And heeeeeeeeeeeere comes the grift