Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 8/6/15

I’m not sure what I like more about this strip: the fact that Killer believes that pretending to be a semi-divine being from a higher plane of existence is a potentially productive seduction technique in the year 2015, or the fact that, based on the angle of the ropes in panels one and two, Beetle can’t be standing more than five feet away, meaning the conversation he and Killer had in panel one was completely audible to these poor young women.

Curtis, 8/6/15

Um, is Curtis about to embark on a storyline where where its title character is regularly eating “mystery meat” from a food truck, “mystery meat” that turns out to be … human flesh???? Once the fiendish butcher is caught and set to death row, will all the adults in Curtis’s life assure him that he couldn’t have known, that he committed no crime — and yet the guilt and shame will still haunt him for the rest of his life? If so, I will 100% forgive this strip for skipping the traditional Kwanzaa madness last year.

Archie, 8/6/15

Man, Archie Comics sure have their finger on the pulse of modern teen life, am I right? I mean, yard sales! God, there’s nothing a teen loves more than a yard sale.

Post Content

Mark Trail, 8/5/15

Nice, Mark has discovered a mysterious old plane crash right in the area where the horribly diseased shark was pulled out of the water! And this plane crash contains a freakishly huge moray eel! Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Because what I’m thinking is that alien biotechnology was being ferried to a top-secret government lab in the 1930s in this plane when it crashed in the ocean, and now some mysterious entity has … awoken, and is causing unnatural changes to its aquatic environment. I’m looking forward to future Sunday strips that will explain the biology of this new threat. (“The black oil is an extraterrestrial virus that can modify the genetics of Earth life-forms, with terrible consequences!”)

Hagar the Horrible, 8/5/15

As the newspaper industry declines and syndication revenues for comics slip, everyone’s looking to open up new ways to monetize existing intellectual property. For instance, Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industry LLC is pitching a Hagar the Horrible reboot as a gritty, R-rated movie franchise.

Post Content

Mary Worth, 8/4/15

I’ve gone through a lot of fads and obsessions over the eleven (!) years I’ve been writing this blog, but Mary Worth is, and always has been, my lodestar. A quick peek at my stats shows that fully a quarter of the posts I’ve ever written discuss this strip. And you know what? It deserves all the attention. Today’s strip, in two efficient panels, encapsulates everything great about it: the overblown narration box, the crazy dutch angles in panel one as Ian pulls his hair out in consternation, and Toby’s twisted rage-face making her look like she’s planning on slitting Ian’s throat with that X-Acto knife. All this drama, of course, is turning on a relatively minor dispute, which could be resolved in one of several wholly acceptable ways — Ian could apologize and reschedule, Ian could cook something simple himself, Ian could explain his own error and ask the University Director what kind of takeout he’d like. But no, the Camerons have mutually and angrily decided to spin a terrible web of lies, in which Toby will attempt to pass off restaurant takeout food as her own, for literally no good reason at all. We can only hope this all unravels terribly and violently over dinner and Ian’s quest for academic advancement is ruined, ruined, but no matter what I am salivating to see what comes next, just as Ian probably is at the thought of takeout food.

Judge Parker, 8/4/15

Judge Parker’s joys are more subtle, but still worth savoring. Obviously when Sam’s close personal new friend (with whom he will never interact again, not once) gave him a skeet gun as a gift, it was a $20,000 Italian skeet gun. Unlike Sophie, I have no desire to Google anything about skeet gun models or their cost or nation of manufacture, so I’m just going to enjoy Sam’s rapid change of heart between panels one and two. “Hey, Sophie, this’ll be a chance for us to bond, and … wait, it cost how much? Yeah, keep your grubby hands off my high-quality, luxurious gun.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/4/15

Speaking of class war, I too like my whiskey neat, and one of my go-to jokes about that is to say “in a glass” when people ask me how I like it — a joke I will now immediately stop making after seeing an addled British aristocrat say it in a soap opera comic strip. I’m pretty sure our put-upon servant is wearing gloves so that he doesn’t leave prints when he eventually throttles Avery.

Hi and Lois, 8/4/15

Having Lois’s head stick appear in front of the bottom of Dot’s word balloon is an interesting visual choice, but the fact that said word balloon covers up the house shutters makes it look like Lois is sticking her head right through that window. Anyway, I’m focusing on this minutia because I don’t want to deal with the fact that Hi and Lois’s long marriage is riddled with lies and deception.

Pluggers, 8/4/15

GOD DAMN IT PLUGGERS I’M NOT A HUGE FAN OF THE BIG BANG THEORY OR ANYTHING BUT IT’S BEEN ONE OF THE HIGHEST-RATED SHOWS ON TV FOR EIGHT YEARS. THERE’S NO WAY IT CAN BE DESCRIBED AS “THE LATEST” ANYTHING. EIGHT GODDAMN YEAAAAARRRRRSSSS