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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.

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Dick Tracy, 6/19/17

It’s not a secret that I have come to miss the days when Dick Locher helmed Dick Tracy, not least for its violent batshit insanity (the many gruesome deaths of the villains are all nicely outlined here by Uncle Lumpy) set against an art style that seemed to verge into German Expressionism. The subsequent strips since the change in personnel, though in theory featuring better art and more coherent plotting, lack the verve of the Locher era. I feel like things have been getting slightly nuttier lately, and today’s panel is as glorious as it is inexplicable. Is Blackjack robbing Paragon Bank, in a crime unrelated to B.O. Plenty’s problem with the institution’s out-of-control mortgage department? Or is Blackjack secretly running the bank, with his army of masked thugs forcing innocents like our mustachio’d bank exec here to illegally foreclose on houses? How do said thugs get their masks to drape just so? Why is B.O. Plenty wearing sleeve garters like a dealer on a riverboat casino? Is the musical notation floating over our characters’ heads part of the bank’s decor, or is it meant to represent the muzak system playing blissfully away while this scene of high danger goes down? I’m looking forward to getting none of these questions properly answered this week!

Funky Winkerbean, 6/19/17

Oh, hey, so it turns out that the thing Jessica was worried Darin would accidentally discover was that … her mom helped her plan a visit for him and Pete to the Flash Museum in Central City! Now, I don’t know all the ins and outs of the world of comics books, but I’m pretty sure that most places that have “museum” in their name well let anybody in to see their exhibits who’s willing to pay the admission fee, so I’m not sure why everyone is acting like this is a huge deal? Maybe because this museum is dedicated to the Flash, an actual superhero that people have heard of, and not Mister Sponge and Starbuck Jones, which are made up and phony-baloney.

Spider-Man, 6/19/17

Don’t worry, Spidey! Despite this being’s designation as an “armadilloid,” he appears to only superficially resemble any representative superorder Xenarthra, the clade that includes armadillos and and anteaters; in particular, the creature lacks the specialized dentition that makes anteaters unique, instead displaying what a scientist might call “a bunch of big teethy slabs.” Nice try using some taxonomy knowledge to get out of having to do superhero stuff! On the other hand, you yourself are not a spider at all, just a super strong dude in a spandex suit, so maybe he can eat you, I dunno. I for one am willing to find out!

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Hagar the Horrible, 6/18/17

There’s a lot of backstory that has to go into making this gag work. First Hagar has to decide that his life is worthy of being commemorated in a long tale, and then, despite his canonical illiteracy, he has to choose to abandon the traditional orally transmitted poetry of his Viking ancestors in favor of a written biography. Then he has to strong-arm Lucky Eddy, who is himself illiterate, into learning letter-craft and then writing Hagar’s life story down. Then Hagar has to ask which parts of the book are bad for Helga to read, because, as his crude X indicates, he himself still refuses to learn the southern art of writing. Which Helga … has? There’s a lot going on here, is what I’m saying.

Mary Worth, 6/18/17

There is as ever a lot of inappropriate bold-lettering in Mary Worth, but I dearly hope that Esme’s all-bolded final speech balloon indicates that she’s shouting her dialogue at the top of her lungs down the deck. “I’M LEAVING THE INVITATION OPEN, DEREK! THE SEX INVITATION! YOU KNOW, FOR EXTRAMARITAL SEX! FOR WHEN YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT CHEATING ON YOUR WIFE! CABIN 1122! COME BY ANY TIME! TO HAVE SEX WITH ME!”

Hi and Lois, 6/18/17

Guys, I’m … I’m starting to worry about Hi.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/18/17

[a few weeks later, Kelly sees a reference to “the LGBT community” and is moved to look up what the “B” stands for] hey, wait a minute