Post Content

Mark Trail, 11/20/15

Good news for everyone who missed the entire plotline that led up to last week’s fisticuffs: some Homeland Security dudes showed up in a sweet hovercraft (not pictured), and now Mark and Ken are describing their adventures in detail in the breathless tones of very excited nine-year-olds.

Gasoline Alley, 11/20/15

Walt Wallet, having been refamiliarized with the identity of his descendents, is now just straight-up denigrating the sad state of modern education. In his day, everyone could rattle off the list of governors of Plymouth Colony before their eighth birthday! And what’s this garbage? A turkey? Everyone knows there were no turkeys at the first Thanksgiving! The cries of “Quiet!” and “Hush!” will just get more and more ineffectual as Walt finds his cantankerous groove.

Momma, 11/20/15

OK, Momma, I know Room has won critical and commercial acclaim with this premise, but I think you need a little more nuance and character development and a lot less overt Oedipal horror to really make it work.

Apartment 3-G, 11/20/15

GREAT, MARGO’S NOT MARRYING GREG OR ERIC AT THE END OF APARTMENT 3-G, WE’VE GOT LIKE THREE DAYS LEFT, LET’S HURRY UP AND FIND OUT WHO LU ANN AND TOMMIE AREN’T GOING TO MARRY

Post Content

Blondie, 11/19/15

OK, here’s one of the difficulties in making jokes about aging in an extremely long-running and iconic legacy comic strip. Typically you’d assume that a mother of two teenagers would be somewhere around the 35-50 age range, born in the ’60s at the earliest, and so you can get away with jokes about how ha ha kids today think their parents are so ancient and the parents resent them for it. This extremely doesn’t work in Blondie, though, given that the strip began in 1930 with its title character already a young adult, right around the time the first experimental televisions were being demonstrated. So, like, does Blondie remember when the first TV was invented? “What did you study in French today?” she asks, desperately trying to deflect attention away from her terrifying unaging nature.

The Lockhorns, 11/19/15

As Apartment 3-G lurches towards its demise so blandly that I can’t even bring myself to cover it here, I gotta give kudos to the Lockhorns for shutting down with a shocking, unexpected twist. Loretta kicked Leroy out and will have his mail forwarded to his new address and now the strip is over! Fans everywhere can take heart that this long-suffering couple can finally move on with their lives, emotionally.

Momma, 11/19/15

Momma, too, has unexpectedly decided to end its decades-long run today. This conclusion is a little derivative of the final episode of St. Elsewhere; but still, the revelation that Momma’s “children” are just tiny figurines that she manipulates at her whim explains a lot about the tone of the strip. Anyway, kudos for Momma and the Lockhorns for going out on top! Looking forward to whatever will be taking their place in newspapers nationwide tomorrow, probably a tire ad or something.

Post Content

Gasoline Alley, 11/18/15

One of the things I really respect about 115-year-old Gasoline Alley patriarch Walt Wallet is that he has no more interest in remembering anything about the minor characters in this strip’s sprawling cast than I do. Also, as corny as the dialogue on-stage that we’re getting a glimpse of is, at least it’s more like the sort of thing a child would find funny than, say, rambling shaggy dog stories about ancient statues and alien weapons depots.

Mary Worth, 11/18/15

Thank goodness Mary is taking Olive out to have snacks at various New York tourist attractions! At last, her parents can have a little alone time. In panel two, her dad has already put on his Flesh Glasses to prepare for whatever unspeakable acts they have planned.