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Crock, 6/22/17

I like the black smoke rising in the background of the strip; it implies that Poulet’s defeat has had devastating consequences, but gives you room to fill in the blanks about their exact nature. Has some Algerian village been reduced to a smoldering ruin by insurgents because the inhabitants were too accommodating to the foreign occupiers who, when it came down to it, were unable to protect them? Was the Legion’s fort overrun by rebels and burned to the ground as a hated symbol of French authority? Are Crock and Poulet standing on the quay in Algiers or Oran, awaiting the boat that will evacuate them to the métropole, watching the city burn in an orgy of retaliatory violence as colonial rule collapses into a nightmarish power vacuum? “I wish life had a backspace key!” Poulet quips, referring to 130 years of brutal conquest and exploitation.

Mary Worth, 6/22/17

Haha, whoops, looks like I was wrong and it’s Esme who’s going to be tumbling into the wine-dark sea, never to be seen again. This happened because the ship lurched, so Katie didn’t even have to make a choice or feel morally responsible! Remember, kids, smoking is bad, and so is attempted adultery, and so is violating workplace regulations about sexual relationships with customers. If you do any of those things, you’ll drown, probably!

Family Circus, 6/22/17

Are you asking if Big Daddy Keane has noticed that the forward progression of time has ground to a halt, and that he’s doomed to live an eternity with his children never aging, never growing up and leaving the house, just hanging around and saying the darndest things, forever? Look at his face; I’m pretty sure he’s noticed.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/22/17

Ha ha, it’s funny because Lucky Eddy thought he was going to die in agony, so he pissed himself!

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Mary Worth, 6/21/17

Well, I guess it’s not exactly a surprise that this plotline is going to climax with these two busty ladies getting into a no-holds-barred catfight for Derek’s smoky love, and while I think that’s a bit of a cliche, I have to admit I enjoy the direction panel two is taking it. Decades of girl-on-girl fights over men in movies and on TV have trained you to expect that both ladies would grab at each other’s hair the moment this argument escalated from swearing to violence. Instead, as the rain starts pouring out of the dark sky over the endless ocean, Katie looks wide-eyed at Esme’s fury, and leans back over the guardrail. She’s leaning away from her rival’s outstretched hands, of course, but something about her expression seems to carry both epiphany and resignation. “Has it come to this?” she thinks. “Do I need to debase myself in this way, just to keep hold of someone who’s chosen another path? What if I just let gravity take me, let the water rush together over my head? There are worse ways to go than in the arms of the sea.”

Pluggers, 6/21/17

I don’t care if you’ve been a plugger’s doctor for years. I don’t care if you’ve been married to a plugger for your entire adult life. If you don’t understand that for him the whole point of drinking coffee is to ride that buzz until it eats him out from the inside, then you don’t understand him at all.

Dick Tracy, 6/21/17

YOU DIDN’T WANT TO RISK ANYONE’S SAFETY BY STARTING A GUNFIGHT???

WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH DICK TRACY

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Mary Worth, 6/20/17

Oooh, it’s a tense nighttime confrontation on the cruise deck! I guess since the previous nighttime strip the moon has now set or the giant light on the top of the ship has been turned off or something, resulting in this all-blue scene, which was presumably filmed using day for night techniques. Anyhoo, it’s fun to watch ladies attempt to establish firm relationship boundaries and also displace their feelings about male misconduct onto each other, here in the dark!

Hi and Lois, 6/20/17

Shoutout to Hi and Lois for catching up with the times and allowing its adult characters to acknowledge the existence of emojis! Still, it’s good that it maintains some of the classic comics iconography that we all know and love, like corporate CEOs who preside over the the minutia of their company’s day-to-day business from a monogrammed throne.