Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 4/8/16

I’m really enjoying this young couple’s facial expressions as Dennis regales them with tales of his family’s casual and profitable lies. The woman seems flabbergasted, horrified to learn that the Mitchells have taught their child that it’s OK to speak untruths, as long as you can save a little money by doing so. The man, however, is steeped in ennui, as if this is totally in line with what he knows about the deceitful nature of humanity. “Mmm, the child doesn’t seem to even resist spinning this web of falsehoods, and why should he? People need to be taught to be good, and we as a society haven’t been teaching them very well for a very long time.”

Funky Winkerbean, 4/8/16

Cliff Anger’s name is very appropriate — not because of the cliffhangers that were the most prominent features of the Starbuck Jones serials in which he starred, but rather because he’s angry, so very, very angry, about a world that passed him by and the young people who now inhabit it. Fun! Anyway, I dearly hope those ellipses in his word balloon in the final panel represent significantly long pauses. “I … D … I know you know what’s coming next but you’re still gonna have to wait around for me to finish, you little fucks … L …”

Judge Parker, 4/8/16

Oh hey everybody, the non-old-people-sweatshop plot in Judge Parker just resolved itself off-panel, in case you were worried! Rocky! You gotta love that guy, if by “love” you mean “worry about him constantly, in ways that you may or may not be paid to do!”

Mary Worth, 4/8/16

Harlan Jones’s defense before the ethics board will be an intriguing one. “But I made sure to keep my conversation with the undergraduates extremely stilted and square! How could I have possibly known she’d find the phrase ‘This is an informal college atmosphere, and I’m an informal guy’ erotic?”

Post Content

Family Circus, 4/7/16

I would feel sorry for that angel too! Imagine you’re a supernatural, superhuman being, and you suddenly find yourself in combat with a human being, of the sort that your kind hasn’t experienced since the days of Jacob — and this tiny troglodytic creature not only manages to overcome you, but through some unknown power steals your voice. Why, the whole structure of the universe must be under threat! You must warn God — but how, when you cannot speak or scream or even whisper?

Beetle Bailey, 4/7/16

For a strip that takes place entirely within the context of the U.S. military, Beetle Bailey has remarkably little to say about wars, which is interesting considering that the U.S. military has been engaging in one or more wars non-stop for the entirety of the last fourteen and a half years. So when you get strips like today, where warplanes shower Camp Swampy with flowers to let everyone know they’ve had a “successful mission,” which presumably means showering some other country with high explosives — well, it’s hard to know if this is some kind of biting commentary or rah-rah boosterism or just, “Hey, you know how planes usually drop bombs on people? Well, get a load of this.”

Post Content

Crock, 4/6/16

Ha ha, “downloading” is definitely a word related to computers in some way, and “the recycle bin” is definitely part of the desktop metaphor used in the popular Windows operating system! “Download that to the old recycle bin,” that’s what the kids say, when they’re surfing on their PCs and such. Hilarious! In other news, due to the inexorable march of mechanical efficiency, this domesticated camel is no longer needed by its human masters, and so it will be released into the wild to inepty fend for itself, or possibly just killed so its carcass can be processed for a number of industrial uses.

Judge Parker, 4/6/16

Speaking of the inexorable march of efficiency, I’m very excited to hear that Neddy’s half-baked plan to out-compete Chinese labor by extracting the last few useful labor-hours out of government-subsidized old people has now become a “movement.” And look in that gleam in Foster Chubb’s eyes! This is a man who thought he could grift the Spencer-Parkers with comically stagy wound dressings, so sure, he’s 100% on board with this “groundswell of support” that will somehow defeat basic economics.

Six Chix, 4/6/16

Definitely if I had died, and my immortal soul had been misplaced in some mysterious subvoid for an uncountable age, and then I was yanked out of that only to be shepherded into an even more unknowable afterlife, that’s the dazed, terrified expression I’d have on my face.

Hi and Lois, 4/6/16

Hey guys, uhhhhhh, it turns out Trixie can read? This has a number of unsettling implications that I’m reasonably sure aren’t going to be pursued.

Mary Worth, 4/6/16

“I mean, I could tell after one class that Harlan Jones doesn’t know jack shit about art history, and he still got a job here, so there must be something to it!”