Post Content

Hagar the Horrible, 5/29/14

In the 9th and 10th centuries, spices were unfathomably expensive in Western Europe; most came from the Muslim world and beyond, where the states were much more powerful than the chaotic post-Carolingian kingdoms, and so the Vikings usually had to offer money or legitimate trade items, rather than going with their usual M.O. of just raiding and looting. In other words, this scene is pretty much the early medieval Norse equivalent of a millionaire couple having sex on a bed covered in hundred-dollar bills.

Dennis the Menace, 5/29/14

“C’mon, Joey,” said Dennis. “Let’s go outside.”

“But … but Dennis, it’s pouring out. It’s been pouring out all day.”

“Whatever. We’re going out to play.”

And then they just stood there, under the umbrella that didn’t quite cover them both, for more than an hour. Dennis was staring at the sidewalk and the sign with an angry intensity. The silence was tense, electric. Joey didn’t dare move. He knew Dennis was thinking something, was about to say something, that he had brought him here for a reason — but for what? What did he have on his mind? What was he going to say? It was the most menacing evening Joey had ever spent. He knew his mother was waiting for him to come home, but he was too scared to leave.

Momma, 5/29/14

“Ha ha,” said the Hobbes siblings to each other, “Momma sure is having trouble parsing easy-to-understand English sentences!” None of them mentioned it, but they knew what they felt, that moment they walked into the living room and found her sitting in the chair, the TV still on, her head lolled grotesquely off to one side. For just a second, before her eyes jerked open and she started babbling nonsense, they all felt, deep in their hearts, the purest kind of freedom they’d ever known. They never talked about it, of course, but then again, they never had to.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/29/14

Hootin’ Holler’s soil is so poor and rocky that it cannot feed itself through subsistence agriculture; and yet, since it has nothing much else to offer economically, what food the inhabitants do manage to import from the outside world isn’t particularly plentiful or nourishing either.

Crankshaft, 5/29/14

Crankshaft is just a straight-up dick about everything, all the time.

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 5/28/14

Beetle Bailey trufans know that Wednesday is Miss Buxley Wednesday, when the strip’s increasingly crudely drawn resident sexpot is guaranteed to appear for the delight and arousal of the strip’s increasingly aged core audience. Which is why I found today’s strip, in which she insults and humiliates her boss/constant sexual harasser, so intriguing. Will we go further and further in this direction?. In a year or two, will Miss Buxley Wednesday just consist of a panel with her saying “Why on earth do I come to work in a professional setting in a little black cocktail dress? Wait, are you masturbating to me right now? You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/28/14

I’ve been joking for months that this Sarah plot would devolve into “Sarah is forced to go through the motions of painting performatively, like an animal at the zoo,” but … it looks like that’s really going to happen? I guess her parents were so focused on all the money she was going to make that they didn’t pay much attention to this part of the contract, ha ha! A million thumbs up to Rex Morgan for taking things to their logical conclusion, which also involves Sarah theatrically pouting. More Sarah pouting, I say! Pout, girl! Pout with all your might!

Post Content

Mark Trail, 5/27/14

“Honey, when the bear was closing in on me, I didn’t fear for my own safety … all I could think of was you! I just filled my mind with a vision of your face, and I prayed, inwardly, with all my might, ‘O Ursicus Maximus, Lord of Bears, please call your servants away from me, and I promise that I will make a sacrifice to you out of this beautiful she-human. Spare me, O Bear God, and you will be paid back a thousand-fold in blood.’ Anyway, now I’m going outside for a little stroll, maybe down to the sacred grove that shelters the ancient Bear Altar … care to join me?”

Apartment 3-G, 5/27/14

Whoops, looks like in all the time Tommie’s been working for no pay down at the large animal cult compound, Jack neglected to mention his girlfriend! Carol refuses to address Jack with the “Doctor” honorific that his veteranarian status would seem to call for, but on the other hand she’s eager to make out with him even though he’s coated in cow afterbirth-goo, so they seem to have a good thing going on.