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Blondie, 5/24/17

I gotta respect today’s Blondie: at first I thought it was going to try to go back to the well of “Oh no, the scientific classifications of objects in our solar system have changed since I was a child, and I have not gotten over it despite the fact that it happened literally more than a decade ago.” But then it took a sharp turn into much less explored territory: ever since the turn of the millennium, all of what we perceive as our “existence” is really a vast computationally generated simulacrum that we can dimly understand by thinking about our own crude social networks. What is a planet? What is real? The only ones who know are those who set the rules for our reality — and those rules, and their makers, are utterly inscrutable to us.

Dick Tracy, 5/24/17

Meanwhile, Dick and the Major Crimes Unit are closing in on the Margies, who are not only mid-level cosplay convention grifters but also, apparently, anti-Semitic vandals? Ugh. Anyway, all Dick Tracy trufans are going to be thrilled when Dick cracks this case using one of his most beloved and widely known skills: satchel recognition at a distance.

Judge Parker, 5/24/17

Wow, Abby’s dad shaves and puts on a nice suit when he poses for a photo with his secret family. But when he’s just chillin’ at home, arguing with his real wife about his infidelities, he grows a gross mustache and wears a collared shirt on top of another collared shirt for some reason. Sad!

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/23/17

Crazy Harry is one of those characters who Funky Winkerbean has never really figured out what to do with, post-time jump. His nickname is a callback to his amusing eccentricities during the wacky teen version of the strip, but now mostly is a sad reminder of his pervasive anxiety and depression. Anyway, you may think this is a strip about a man so out of touch with reality that he doesn’t recognize what ordinary household products like shampoo look like, and it is of course about that, but it’s also keeping with the strip’s canon about one of Crazy Harry’s business ideas/hobbies: digitizing VHS tapes. So maybe it’s Crazy Harry’s wife who’s confused here? Anyway, the point is, somebody couldn’t resist the “what if a person thought ‘head cleaner’ was another word for shampoo” joke, even though they literally stopped making VCRs last year.

Gil Thorp, 5/23/17

“I’d say it was news — in another time and another place. Specifically, in a time and place where domestic abuse allegations have long-term consequences for elite athletes. That time and place certainly isn’t here and now, ha ha!”

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Mary Worth, 5/22/17

Oh, did you think that Entertainer Esmé’s sinister plan to win Derek’s love by locking his wife Katie in a Haitian bathroom failed just because Derek quickly found and rescued her? Well, you’ve got another thing coming! Look at the sinister, knowing way she’s gazing down at the grateful but rattled Hoosiers. Obviously she never expected Katie to stay in that bathroom for long. Obviously that was just the first move in a very long game of sexual chess that ends with Derek as her lover. I remain extremely here for this storyline, is what I’m saying.

Marvin, 5/22/17

I don’t really keep up with the “game show scene” so I had to actually Google to see if Can You Top This? were a real game show. It’s not, unless you want to count an “unrehearsed” “radio panel game” from the 1940’s “in which comedians told jokes and tried to top one another”, which, around here we call that a podcast, not a game show. Anyway, it took me a minute to realize that, unlike poor Bubba Watson, Drew Carey isn’t quite being referred to by name here, which makes sense because you’d think drawing a public figure presiding over a game show where dead-eyed contestants describe getting hit in the face with streams of urine would open you up to lawsuits.

Blondie, 5/22/17

Ha ha, it’s funny because Mr. Dithers’s wife doesn’t want to spend time with him!

Pluggers, 5/22/17

Pluggers’ day-to-day lives involve coming up with coping strategies as their accumulated filth piles up around them. It’s really quite sad!