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Crock, 3/30/16

Crock may be the only comic that I’ve antagonized so much that they felt a need to do a genuinely mean-spirited strip about me, but at least I am familiar with long-running Crock jokes and traditions, which is more than I can say for the people paid actual money to help produce it for publication. Captain Preppy, for instance, is an egomaniac who likes to gaze at himself in a handheld mirror while talking about how great he is. This is well-established Crock canon. Yet somebody looked at a black-and-white version of today’s strip and said, “He’s a holding a corndog, right? Looks like a corndog. Let’s check out the dialogue in panel two. ‘Boy, am I lucky.’ Yep, that’s the sort of thing that someone holding a corndog would say. God, I wish I had a corndog right now! Anyway, paintcan tool, pick corndog brown off the color chart, bloop, bloop, bloop. Done! On to Curtis! Wonder what he’s eating.”

Judge Parker, 3/30/16

Haha, Mrs. Chubb folded immediately after like 30 seconds of fairly mild questioning from Sam. Just goes to show that if you’re going to run a sordid fake-accident-injury scam, do not enlist as your accomplice a woman for whom pearls are part of her casual, lounging-around-the-house wear. She will be far too classy to commit.

Archie, 3/30/16

Jesse Ventura ran for governor in 1998, which I guess offers some solid evidence for when the current run of Archie strips were originally written. I certainly hope that nobody was misled by this strip into thinking that Greco-Roman wrestling was a flashy, high-profile road to fame and eventual political glory.

Mary Worth, 3/30/16

“Hmm, what should I wear for my first day of class? I know: pants, a suit jacket, and a vest, all precisely the same shade of green!” –A guy who thinks about art and aesthetics, like, professionally

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Family Circus, 3/29/16

I’m usually pretty meh on the art in the Family Circus. Still, the trailing shoelace in today’s panel is a nice idea, despite the fact that those shoes look to be loafers and the lace is sort of emerging out of nowhere. It gives a nice air of childhood whimsy and innocence to the drawing; it also gives hardcore Billy haters like myself hope that he’s soon going to trip and break a tooth, or, even better, his watch.

Crankshaft, 3/29/16

Tom Batiuk famously writes Funky Winkerbean almost a year in advance, which I assume is also true for Crankshaft. So it’s actually just a total coincidence that this storyline is running the same week a guy in North Carolina was stopped because he had a broken taillight and then literally handcuffed and taken to jail for not returning Freddy Got Fingered to his local video store in 2002. (The local video store, I think it goes without saying, closed down years ago.) Anyway, if we live in an absurd world where decades-old civil judgements for very small amounts of money can lead to actual arrest, maybe you should be careful, Lillian! The cops in the North Carolina case were nice enough to let the guy drop his daughter off at school first, but they didn’t have to! Probably they could just drag Lillian off to jail and leave the twins in the car, miles from anywhere. (Is Lillian even supposed to be driving these kids around?)

Mary Worth, 3/29/16

Looks like Dawn’s starting to make a bolder personal effort at school! Step one: just don’t do things you don’t want to do! If she were being a little bolder, she just would’ve said “Nahh, not my scene. Later, blondie!” But this is definitely an improvement over signing up and pretending to enjoy it.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/29/16

“…what if I looked him up … on the Internet? And so I did. He’s got a Wikipedia page. Turns out he’s dead! Cool story, huh?”

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(Brief correction: Guys, due to a cut-and-paste error, this week’s Comment of the Week was inaccurately attributed! It is actually from Steve S. Now fixed!)

Marvin, 3/28/16

The daily comics are a medium that rewards complacency, which is why I find Marvin’s commitment to innovation impressive. The strip could’ve rested on its laurels as “that awful thing where a baby smugly pees and poops all the time,” but no: they introduced sapient dog characters who can communicate with the baby characters, and the dogs’ peeing and pooping are also a source of laughs. But the creative team did not stop there! No, today we see the dawn of a new chapter in Marvin: a chapter in which the very bodily organs responsible for the elimination of waste now have minds of their own and speak and interact with others. Can’t wait to see what pithy witticisms Marvin’s G.I. tract has in store for us!

Judge Parker, 3/28/16

Hey, were you worried that Neddy was going to actually suffer consequences of some sort for her terrible, reckless driving. Well, don’t worry, these Chubbs (actual name) are clearly scam artists, determined to soak the local trillionaires, dressing up in comically outdated medical dressing that they probably borrowed from the local amateur theater company or something. Look, even their fat little dog has some on! This is just yet another example of the put-upon rich being abused in this country, and I for one will cheer when Sam sues them back to the stone age.

Dick Tracy, 3/28/16

“Welp, another adventure done. Looks like it’s all over but the shouting!” [in the background, as Dick and his friends smile at each other smugly: literal shouting from the dozens of people who have been horribly injured in this huge explosion]