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Slylock Fox, 3/8/16

Guys, we have a lot of fun here on joshreads dot com talking about the Slylock Fox backstory, when the animal uprising destroyed human civilization and brought the Before Time to an abrupt and violent end. But let’s just enjoy today’s six differences outside of that context, and appreciate it for what it is: a doubled depiction of mustachio’d man with a thousand-mile stare selling balloons, bright red balloons, each bearing a frowny face of the sort that would appeal to only the gloomiest and gothiest. But then — one drifts away! And smiles as it drifts to the skies! Here is the secret seventh difference: in the left panel, the balloon-man happened to have one smiley balloon, and that happened to be the one he lost his grip on; in the right, he has enslaved a race of silent but emotive balloon-beings, and one of them has finally managed to break free.

Gasoline Alley, 3/8/16

Speaking of the uncanny, Gasoline Alley seems to have shifted from an incredibly long and dull plot about scrapbooking to an incredibly unnerving plot about animals who can talk but only one little boy can understand them and also a forest fire burned down their home and now they want revenge. “I understand,” the owl says. “Your human justice system doesn’t consider us animals worthy of attention or protection. Fortunately, we have razor-sharp claws and teeth and can impose our own kind of justice on those who wronged us.”

Funky Winkerbean, 3/8/16

For reasons I cannot understand, the little girls who visit Crankshaft’s elderly, lonely neighbor and are extremely literal minded about everything have now been introduced into Funky Winkerbean, and apparently this was important enough to really highlight the weird chronological discontinuity between the strips by making them ten years older. Anyway, they’re making friends! Like with that 45-year-old dude who’s always trying to have sex with high school girls but the administration lets him hang around anyway, for some reason!

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Beetle Bailey, 3/7/16

So after a minute or so I gave up on trying to parse Sarge’s dialogue here as a joke, and then maybe 45 seconds after that stopped trying to parse it as actual sincere advice, and finally settled on just trying to figure the contexts — geographic, professional, social, whatever — in which today’s strip is taking place. Like we know from previous strips that Sarge has an office, though this one is looking more Endless Void-y than usual. But has Beetle just kind of … wandered in? To get weird, incomprehensible platitudes? From his commanding officer, who is reading them off a piece of paper, or possibly just holding up a blank piece of paper? I’m really going to have to grapple with the content of this joke to figure out what’s happening, aren’t I?

Mary Worth, 3/7/16

Aww, isn’t this sweet! Mary and Jeff are going to the Bum Boat … their place! And after that, they’ll be crashing every funeral they can, or at least I assume so based on Mary’s outfit. (In Santa Royale, crashing funerals is the closest you can get to hitting all the hottest goth clubs.)

Marvin, 3/7/16

Marvin’s usual M.O. is to mine laffs out of the title character’s constant pooping and peeing, which is gross but has a shred of respectability because, after all, he’s a baby! Pooping and peeing in a diaper is like a huge part of babies’ whole deal! But now we see the slippery slope we’ve been on all this time: if it’s OK to joke about Marvin and his butthole and what comes out of it, why not joke about his dad’s butthole now too, huh? Why not? Can you give me one good reason why not? Basic human decency, you say? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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Heathcliff, 3/6/16

Right there in the third panel of the middle row is where Heathcliff straight-up murders a fish. I love its facial expression — not terror, but grim resignation. “Welp,” it seems to be thinking, “I guess I should’ve done more with my life. Too late now!”

Dennis the Menace, 3/6/16

Dennis sure has been on a reign of defecatory terror lately. Money? Art? All the things that separate us from the animals? Dennis will crap on it. Dennis will crap on all of it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/6/16

“I’ve never lived anywhere else! And neither will you, now! You can’t leave the property! There’s a curse!”

Panel from Hi and Lois, 3/6/16

ha ha ha punk rock dude, you’re in a band that plays Eagles covers