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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/19/16

You know, what with Hootin’ Holler being a largely lawless place, with a rugged landscape and local knowledge about property holdings more likely to be passed down through generations by word of mouth than delineated on any map, bringing in surveyors isn’t the worst idea in the world! It could be a real growth industry, and could probably help cut down on the endless, violent clan feuds whose flareups can often be blamed on property line disputes, even if control of moonshine smuggling turf is ultimately the root cause. And, let’s be real, it’d be pretty useful for someone in the Smif family to have a job.

Dennis the Menace, 8/19/16

If you want to create a portrait of a child as a low-key but effective menace to everything you think about yourself as a person who heads a civilized family, this is a good start: he stares at your guest with dead eyes and shows unfamiliarity with basic concepts, all while drooling freely onto his own dinner.

Beetle Bailey and Crock, 8/19/16

Hey kids, did you know that some of America’s longest-running comic strips take place in the military during actual violent conflicts? Beetle Bailey is stateside, for the most part, but its soldiers must know that they could be deployed at any time; in today’s strip, their nighttime anxieties escalate, from right to left, climaxing with Beetle, who, panicked but clear-eyed, can only think of massive, world-obliterating explosions. Meanwhile, today’s Crock reminds us that most of the main characters are occupation troops in a grinding, brutal colonial war. Happy Friday!

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Mark Trail, 8/18/16

Oh say, it looks like this new Mark Trail storyline isn’t going to be about whales after all! It’s going to be about ants, specifically invasive fire ants, who presumably set up a nest in the corpses of this amorous couple two years ago and have now evolved into unstoppable killers. Anyway, today’s panel two is definitely the best ever instance of Mark keeping a straight face while a government bureaucrat spells out an entire URL over the phone for some reason. While there really isn’t room in the panel to structure the word balloons this way, I like to think that the actual dialogue is something like this:

“That’s doubleyou doubleyou doubleyou dot”

“Abbey–”

“hungry pests dot com”

“Abbey, this all–”

“slash the dash threat”

[a pause]

“This all sounds like–”

“slash imported dash fire dash…”

Gil Thorp, 8/18/16

Marty Moon runs a radio show entirely dedicated to high school sports (and, apparently, the legal ramifications of the deaths of high school athletes). But it’s a well known fact that Marty is “out of touch” with the kids who should be making up the bulk of his audience. Today we learn that he doesn’t even have an app that teens can download to their beloved smartphones to get push notifications about the news they care about, along with messages from Marty’s sponsors and corporate partners! No, they’re getting texts from their parents about stuff Marty’s saying on the radio, which strikes me as very difficult to monetize.

Dick Tracy, 8/18/16

“I mean, why would I shoot my food, right? I could, I guess. Like if I shot my food a bunch of times, that’d break it up into bite-sized pieces. But that seems like way more work than it’s worth. Still, you know, for fighting and stuff, I think guns are the way to go.”

Mary Worth, 8/18/16

Ugh, Tommy, all the street hustlers in My Own Private Idaho did cool drugs, like heroin. You get your pills from the damn CVS, Tommy. That’s not cool at all.

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Six Chix, 8/17/16

I really, sincerely, hope that in the original version of this comic, rejected by the syndicate with extreme prejudice and disgust, the baby bird has already hatched from her egg, and the momma bird is vomiting half-digested worms into her mouth.

Gasoline Alley and Mary Worth, 8/17/16

Women! Always wanting to “talk” and “share emotional intimacy” and all that bullshit, amiright fellas? Who needs that? Certainly not you, so long as you have the glory of untouched nature and/or powerful opioid painkillers!

Hi and Lois, 8/17/16

God as my witness, I chuckled at “Noiz 2 Men.” I chuckled audibly. You might think, from reading my unceasingly negative comics blog, that I have a heart made of stone, but I am here to tell you that I do not.