The Comics Curmudgeon

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One-panel Thursday

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Crankshaft, 5/18/17

I admit despite myself that I’m weirdly fascinated by this Bubba Watson cameo in Crankshaft this week, which has mostly served as a variation on one of the strip’s running “jokes,” which is that the guys are cruel to and dismissive of Lena, who has never been show to be anything but a nice person. Anyway, one thing that’s really jumped out at me is that Watson’s caricature hasn’t had any actual dialogue, as if he’s in this strip because he actually lost a real-life bet, but has negotiated some concessions to retain a smidgen of dignity.

The Lockhorns, 5/18/17

I guess Leroy’s diagonal lean is supposed to represent the fact that he’s getting down from the barstool and heading home to spend time with his hated wife, but I prefer to believe that he’s just about to teeter over into drunken unconsciousness, and “unhappy hour” is his little nickname for being face-down blackout drunk on the filthy floor of a bar.

Family Circus, 5/18/17

Yes, Kittycat does pray before meals. She prays to Bast, the cat goddess of the Egyptians, a much more ancient god than the one her cruel, melon-headed captors worship. She prays … for vengeance.

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Moderately self-righteous Wednesday

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/17/17

The last however many seemingly interminable days of Rex Morgan, M.D., have involved Kelly agreeing to take on extra after-school childcare duties at the Morgans so that June can go back to work at the clinic, with June talking a lot about finding a “balance” between family and professional life. Today’s strip is intriguing because it reveals the truth about the balance that upper-class families seek: that it is purchased at the expense of working-class people who need the money badly enough that they neglect their own personal lives so that the wealthy can enjoy a well-rounded existence. This radical political message is however a little undercut by the fact that we’re talking about Kelly, a high schooler who mainly wants to spend more time with her boyfriend on her off hours so she doesn’t have to give him surreptitious handjobs while she’s supposed to be babysitting. But, I would argue, if June deserves both professional fulfillment and a two-child family, then so too do Kelly and Niki deserve the full range of teen fooling around that their social betters take as a given.

Shoe, 5/17/17

Say, have you ever had the experience of seeing a comely tattooed young woman in a tight, short skirt, and you can’t stop seething about how the decline in America’s morals means that supposedly respectable girls go around dressed like prostitutes these days but also can’t stop visualizing her every time you close your eyes? Well, good news: if you have a comic strip that sometimes features erotically drawn bird-women, you can work your problems out … through your art.

The Lockhorns, 5/17/17

Wait wait wait, are Leroy and Loretta supposed to be … younger than me? Welp, time to die

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FUN FACT FOR THE DAY: We’re all slowly dying!!!!

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Judge Parker, 5/16/17

Everyone who had “the kidnapper is Abbey’s half-sister from her dad’s secret family” in the pool, stand up and take a bow! I’m enjoying the punchline of “Sam doesn’t recognize what his own wife looked like as a child,” though I suppose in a scenario where you see a picture of a kid that looks more or less like pictures you’ve seen of your wife as a kid, and the kid in the picture is standing in front of someone who’s definitely your wife’s dad, you would just kind of assume. Plus the hair! Who else would have that clownish color of hair? It must be a Spencer gene that passes down through the male line but only expresses itself in females! The fact that the grownup kidnapper has bland brown hair means nothing: clearly she’s keeping her Spencertude in disguise, waiting to reveal it at just … the right … moment. Either that or the syndicate coloring folks have been doing it wrong this whole time, ha ha, who can tell!

Pluggers, 5/16/17

A Twitter follower pointed out to me last week that the length of time I’ve been writing this blog is longer than the entire run of Calvin and Hobbes, which is definitely a fact that doesn’t make me want to hop into a coffin and close the lid behind me, at all! Anyway, one of the signs of time’s inevitable passing and my own impending death is the treatment of technology in Pluggers. Way back in the early years of this blog, in the mid ’00s, pluggers hated and feared the Internet so much that they’d rather thumb through an almanac than get access to the wealth of knowledge online. Today, they’re still eschewing the Web’s more educational functions, but they are definitely not above joining their children and grandchildren in the performative dance of social media, in which our every waking moment becomes a quantum of digital information to be shared and ranked.

Crankshaft, 5/16/17

At least I’m not so old that I’m excited about the appearance of some pro golfer in Crankshaft, though! CONFIDENTIAL TO PEOPLE WHO EXPERIENCED ANY GLIMMER OF ENTHUSIASM FROM READING THIS STRIP: it’s just a drawing, and there are lots of reference photos online, he didn’t actually have to participate in the creation of it in any way, SORRY