Post Content

Mary Worth, 3/21/17

Ah, yes, just as predicted, Jeff would rather annoy his daughter and son-in-law than spend time with Mary on what I’m sure is a fully ADA-accessible cruise ship, which means that gal time on the high seas is go! I do like that Jeff thinks to ask if Ian is going too. Maybe’s hoping to lure the good Professor over to drink all of Adrian and Scott’s scotch and get some bro-bonding in! Sadly, Ian is out of town, so we won’t get to find out the depths of contempt in which ol’ Chinbeard holds Dr. Corey, who chose to use his doctorate to tend to vile human bodies, as opposed to plumbing the depths of English and Scots literature, as a creature pure mind would.

Family Circus, 3/21/17

It’s true: the smooth, pink, undifferentiated pink loaf-like material that makes up the Keane Kids’ bodies, now fully on display as we see them here with their shirts off, takes a while to absorb the Nutrient Fluid the technician is injecting into them. Remember kids, your weekly tune-up keeps your ghastly simulacrum of life vaguely believable!

Post Content

Crock, 3/20/17

You might think this is just a typical cartoon where a lonely desert-dwelling child’s only friend is a freakish buzzard. But, not so! Check out Little Otis’s blank, pupil-less stare in the second panel. That buzzard isn’t his friend at all; it’s hypnotizing him. Imagine “How should I introduce you to my mom, Wadsworth?” spoken in an eerie monotone. The only introducing that’s going to happen will come once Otis, under Wadsworth’s mesmerizing gaze, murders his parents and “introduces” the foul carrion eater to their delicious corpses.

Slylock Fox, 3/20/17

Hey, sinister grinning bear (?) lumberjacks: instead of stealing this poor beaver’s trees, have you considered recruiting him, for a good-paying job in the lumberjack industry that apparently still exists in this animal-ruled world? Honestly, how is it that in the animal economy there’s a single lumber company that isn’t entirely beaver-staffed?

Family Circus, 3/20/17

It’s bad, in the sense that it’s supposed to be “on fleek” (and I’m 100% sure the Family Circus isn’t clever enough to intend this to be an error either on Billy’s or Big Daddy Keane’s part), and also in the sense that the Family Circus shouldn’t be doing jokes about the phrase “on fleek.” Just bad all around. Bad bad bad.

Spider-Man, 3/20/17

Given that Rocket Raccoon isn’t well known on the version of Earth that has the misfortune to be depicted in Newspaper Spider-Man, I love that the lower word balloon in the second panel ends in an exclamation point. You’d think that the cop would say “Spider-Man — and a raccoon???? [comical BOI-OI-OING sound effect],” but nope, he’s just accepting this as yet another one of life’s passing mysteries.

Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/19/17

I get why a new writer might want to retool a long-running strip a bit, especially when it comes to a character who, through a long series of choices that might’ve individually made sense, became an art prodigy at a prestigious private school who’s bankrolled by a mob widow and chauffeured about by said mob widow’s brutal enforcer. Still, it seems like the best approach would probably be to rip off the band-aid quickly; I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the strip that got it right was Newspaper Spider-Man, which was coerced by its corporate parent into going along with the comic book continuity’s One More Day storyline in which Peter’s marriage to MJ was erased from history by a demon (no, really), and so introduced the shift in the most half-assed way possible: by just straight-up announcing it with no further explanation beyond a wall of text telling us, “yeah, this is what we’re doing now.” Then, when it turned out everyone hated this idea, a new wall of text was like “oh, yeah it was all a dream, sorry y’all.” I’m not saying Rex Morgan should be quite that blatant about it, but honestly the more they dwell on changing up Sarah’s character, the more obvious the grinding gears are. Just send her to public school! It’ll be fine! We won’t even notice, probably!

By the way, June saying “I don’t recall you being close friends with any of those kids” is one of the coldest things I’ve ever seen a comic strip mom say to her too-smart-for-her-age socially weird daughter. That’s also big talk from someone who has exactly one friend, her erstwhile nanny, who is decamping for England after June suggested she have an affair with a household employee, so as to acquire his seed.

Marvin, 3/19/17

I don’t know if Sunday Marvin strips have always referred to its repugnant title character as “the playpen philosopher” and I’m just now noticing, or if this is a recent attempt to rebrand the hated baby. Either way, I’m disappointed that there’s no philosophy in today’s strip, though I suppose responding to your father’s unconditional affection with disgust is “philosophical” compared to, say, smugly announcing that you reek of shit and piss.