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Crankshaft, 2/22/16

The phrase “bet the farm” comes from an earlier era, when agriculture was the primary economic activity and a significant portion of the population lived on small family farms. To many people of that era, a farm was a home and a job and a family legacy and a retirement fund, all wrapped up in one; to “bet the farm” meant, in essence, to gamble everything you had. Thus, Crankshaft’s malapropism is for once appropriate. Crankshaft definitely needs access to a pharmacy to live! He’s very old and not particularly healthy.

Mark Trail, 2/22/16

“…I’m only teasing! Definitely do not try to get out more often. Stay here, safe in this cave, for the rest of time! You’ll see how boring my life is as the three of us gradually slip into isolation-induced delirium, here in this kingdom of eternal darkness!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/22/16

Ya can always count on yore fambly … t’just straight up beat the shit out of you! Punch you right in the God-damned face! I know it’s Monday and everything, but this strip is particularly grim.

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Dennis the Menace, 2/21/16

I can imagine nothing more menacing than this cartoon. Children cynically acting out the most shopworn tropes of gender dynamics for our amusement? Dennis hoping against hope to spend his middle age in sloth and lethargy? This ought to chill the very souls of all right-thinking people.

Spider-Man, 2/21/16

Dr. Strange is the one they’re making into a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie with Benedict Cumberbatch, right? I love that they haven’t bothered to make him look even slightly Cumberbatchish in the last panel here. I also am going to spend the rest of the day imagining Benedict Cumberbatch intoning “the wand of watoomb!” in grandiloquent Cumberbatchian style. This is code for, like, tickets to Hamilton or something, right? Those are about as magical an item as MJ could lay her hands on.

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Six Chix, 2/20/16

“Whatta bunch of shallow losers! They spent all night watching stories that teams of writers, performers, and technicians had crafted just for them, that say something about the human condition! I meanwhile spent the evening staring up at the unfeeling stars, which burn on endlessly whether I exist or not.”

Judge Parker, 2/20/16

Remember, Derek’s band is made up entirely of high school students, and Sophie, who I guess plays guitar in it, literally did not know how to play guitar at all until she started taking lessons with Derek in 2011, which is probably like three months ago in strip time, tops. This will be the ultimate test of the Parkerverse’s “A Spencer-Driver-Parker always gets paid” constant.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/20/16

Speaking of the protagonist of a soap opera strip always getting paid, I love Summer’s worried facial expression in panel three here. “So, he wants to buy a house and he needs me to … oh, God, I’m supposed to give him a house, right? Just like that other guy did? Where … where am I going to find a house on such short notice?”

Beetle Bailey, 2/20/16

General Halftrack’s facial expression in panel two is exactly how you should look when you’re visualizing an undead Winston Churchill, rotting flesh sloughing off in great chunks, shambling about stinking of gin and attempting to reconquer India.

Crankshaft, 2/20/16

I feel like my suspicions yesterday have been confirmed: this is definitely a plot in which “valentine” is code for “dick pic.”

Gasoline Alley, 2/20/16

You know who else was widely thought to be dead but was then discovered alive in a cave, several days later? What is the New Testament, if not a scrapbook of the risen Christ?

Heathcliff, 2/20/16

~INFINITE NESTING HEATHCLIFFS~