Post Content

Spider-Man, 3/4/16

You know, last week when I accidentally mistook this storyline’s antagonist for Dr. Strange, some people got mad at me. How dare I call myself the Comics Curmudgeon when I can’t even properly curmudgeon about prominent comics characters! Well, joke’s on you people: I care a million times more about Mary Worth than I do about anything that happened in a superhero comic book ever. The fun thing about reading Newspaper Spider-Man for me is having really no preconceptions about what exactly is supposed to be happening at any given moment. Like, if I had been paying attention to the Marvel universe at all the I wouldn’t have the joyful moment of discovery today when I learned that Dr. Strange’s name is Stephen. Steve! Steve Strange! Oh, this is a delight.

Mary Worth, 3/4/16

“That’s great, Mary, great. You always have friends. I never have to worry about you being lonely. I just, sometimes … how come nobody ever worries about me? Poor, lonely Dr. Jeff. You were gone, what, six weeks? Eight? I just … I get tired, you know. Tired of this life. I gotta … I’m just gonna rest my forehead on the steering wheel for a few minutes. Just rest my eyes. Wave the other cars around us, OK?”

Mark Trail, 3/4/16

“I meant … I meant sex, OK? I regret it now. It’s stupid and I regret it. I don’t want to die in a cave!” [sobbing]

The Lockhorns, 3/4/16

If there aren’t a half-dozen improv teams named Drunk Leroy Lockhorn formed by the middle of next week, I’m going to be very disappointed.

Post Content

Hi and Lois, 3/3/16

A lot of the emotional impact of this strip is, I guess, supposed to come from the expression on Lois’s face, which is really too bad because any time spent lingering on Lois’s face is time spent realizing that she is a lumpy-skulled noseless horror. I guess … she’s poignantly thinking “Someday his hormones will start getting revved up and any hint of sex on screen will induce instant and humiliating erections, but for now he’s my little boy?” Dear God, I’m sorry, but does she have a … snout? I’m trying, I’m really trying, but I can’t.

Beetle Bailey, 3/3/16

It’s cool that Beetle Bailey has suddenly recognized the existence of craft beers and all, I guess? God forbid they discover home brewing. I don’t think I could handle jokes about hopped wort and such told next to extremely crudely drawn brewing equipment.

Dennis the Menace, 3/3/16

See, Marvin can talk about pooping and peeing on things all day and every day, but then Dennis comes along and shows him what a real menace is and does. “Is there someplace I can shit in here? Because that’s what I think of the financial system.”

Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 3/2/16

I dunno, guys, I think we’ve got ask ourselves who the real menace here is? Is it Dennis, who after all is literally a five year old and mostly just repeats what adults say? Or is it Mrs. Wilson, who consistently welcomes a little boy into her home who she know annoys her husband, and then trash-talks her husband in front of him? “Tee hee!” she says, as she hides behind a closet door extremely unconvincingly. “George is fat! This child is saying what we’re all thinking!”

Family Circus, 3/2/16

It took me a minute to figure out that the “joke” here is that Ma Keane is asking her husband to dry the dishes in the most passive-aggressive way possible. Much funnier to me is Big Daddy Keane’s look of pure disgruntlement as Jeffy waves a towel in his face. “What? Participate in the unpaid labor that keeps the household I live in running smoothly? Me? But … but … the patriarchy!”

Pluggers, 3/2/16

You’re a plugger if the struggle between you and your spouse over your possessions ends with your rooting through you neighbor’s garbage.