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Shoe, 1/18/16

Last week I was on the I Haven’t Seen That podcast, a very funny and exciting podcast hosted by Whitney Reynolds and Mark Popham, and we talked newspaper comics, among other things, and it was interesting to see what people do and don’t pick up from the comics. For instance, Mark claimed that, despite reading Shoe regularly, he never realized that its damned bird-men characters work at a newspaper! But they do, and that newspaper apparently runs restaurant reviews, which is curious because the only places where we ever see the bird-people eating out are Roz’s, the sad ’70s fern bar, and I think maybe a fancy white-cloth restaurant with a snooty French waiter? Anyway, there’s three of them, tops, so I assume that each one is reviewed about once a month or so, which the Perfesser’s look of crushing ennui confirms. “Ugggh, what to write about Roz’s this time … old people? Old drunk people? A review for old drunk people? Sounds about right.”

Mary Worth, 1/18/16

You’d think a “professional bakery kitchen” would sound pretty dull even to a known square like Olive, but the alternative seems to be putting together a completely white jigsaw puzzle with Mary while enjoying cookies and water, so you can see why she’s jumping at the opportunity.

Heathcliff, 1/18/16

This is a joke about how Heathcliff and his girlfriend are going to engage in some pharmaceutically-enhanced fucking right here on this couple’s lawn! They brought props, to taunt them with! Let’s hear it for Heathcliff, and for newspaper features editors who just don’t care anymore!

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Panels from Mark Trail, 1/17/16

Wow, it sounds like these so-called fishermen are making a ton of money from animals that aren’t even fish! What a bunch of frauds! Sure glad Mark Trail is on the case to blow the lid off of these seafaring phonies.

Spider-Man, 1/17/16

Oh, look, it’s my favorite kind of industrial accident, right after the kind that produces “Oops! All Berries” Cap’n Crunch: the kind that accidentally results in a comic strip being uploaded without any black in it! This will be probably fixed by the time you read this, but this is what the strip looked like when I found it. The panels are strangely beautiful, and definitely 100% less annoying now that you can’t read any of the dialogue or figure out exactly what’s going on.

Panels from Blondie, 1/17/16

“You don’t understand, Blondie! It’s just cheap and physical with Herb! He’s only for when you’re not available! You’ve gotta believe me!”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/16/16

I’m going to warn you, in case you ever meet me in person: I’m terrible with names. I’ll meet someone, maybe on multiple occasions, and I’ll have lots of positive interactions with them, and I’ll remember all sorts of details about their life that they’ve told me, but for whatever reason the name doesn’t stick, and it eventually gets to the point where it’s too embarrassing to ask. Once, during my ill-starred time in grad school, I was in a seminar with a new student, and one day a friend and I were hanging around the department office when this new guy spotted us and started walking towards us, and my heart dropped because I couldn’t for the life of me remember his name, and I knew that the rules of propriety demanded that I introduce my friend to him, and when he came up to us I literally started saying “Hey, this is–” having no idea how I was going to finish that sentence, when suddenly the new guy cut me off and said, “Don’t bother,” and proceeded to tell us, with relish, how grad school was a sham and he was quitting to join a dot-com startup. He walked off and it was one of the greatest feelings of relief I ever had or would experience. Anyway, I have to imagine that this is how Rex felt, as he opens the conversation about tuition in panel one. Obviously he has to bring it up, he knows this is a private school, he’s no dummy, but surely … I mean, not Sarah … not the Morgans … they can’t expect us to dirty our hands … oh, Sarah’s tuition is paid for forever by blood-soaked mob cash? Excellent! What could possibly go wrong?

Six Chix, 1/16/16

Ha ha, it’s funny because that alien is alive and sapient and then we watch the cat straight up murder and eat it.