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Shoe, 4/3/14

The workings of the human mind are mysterious and arbitrary. My own particular mind, for instance, struggles to remember the identities of the advanced hominids in B.C., but uses valuable neurological space to retain the names and schticks of each and every one of the bird-people of Shoe. Loon, for instance, is a sort of noble fool character whose jokes often revolve around his simplistic misunderstandings of life events. Thus, despite Roz’s Goggle Eyes of Murderous Rage here, I think we’re supposed to read his statement not as cruelty but as a harmless literal interpretation of a metaphorical product name. Still, he seems awfully sanguine for someone who casually believes that a substance exists that makes face-flesh invisible and, when applied properly, leaves its wearer’s brain and sinus cavities visible to anyone who wants to take a look.

Beetle Bailey, 4/3/14

I’ve never been in the military and I’m not a gun guy, so I could be wildly off-base on this, but my guess is that Sarge is less mad about Gizmo’s unauthorized but high-tech modifications to his rifle and more about his appalling attitude towards weapons safety, since he appears to be casually pointing the barrel without really looking in the direction of his fellow soldiers (and, more specifically, in the direction of Sarge’s crotch).

Funky Winkerbean, 4/3/14

Last year we breached the narrative space-time barrier between Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, two strips existing in the same universe but 10 years apart, and reality wasn’t torn to shreds, so we have more of that to look forward to, I guess? It appears that the current dullsville “Cory’s mom looks is trying to complete his comic book collection while he’s in Afghanistan” plot is going to dovetail with the even snoozier Crankshaft “Jeff finds his beloved comic books in the attic” storyline (for certain limited definitions of “story”) from earlier this month. Glad you enjoyed those comics again, Jeff! In ten years, your daughter is going to sell them to some lady. Anyway, for everyone who reads Crankshaft and hates its title character, the good news we get today is that 10 years in his future he’s ranting and raving in a squalid old folks’ home somewhere, where nobody’s listening to him.

Pluggers, 4/3/14

PLUGGERS WERE USED TO THINGS BEING ONE WAY BUT NOW THEY’RE ANOTHER WAY WHY ARE THINGS ALLOWED TO CHANGE WHHHYYYYYYY

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Mary Worth, 4/2/14

Just as I had hoped, this Mary Worth Tommy storyline is so amazing that its amazingness is bleeding over into the non-Tommy parts, including Iris and Wilbur going on this fantastic sandwich date. (The date, as Monday’s strip revealed, is taking place at “Jerry’s Sandwich Shop,” which was presumably once a humble lunch counter that Wilbur single-handedly transformed into what’s clearly a full-service sandwich palace, because he bought so many sandwiches.) As you can see in panel one, Wilbur has purchased the Longer Than It Is Wide Special, whereas Iris went with the more standard Perfectly Square model. Both sandwiches are, in keeping with Jerry’s relentless focus on quality, entirely monochromatic, with bread, ingredients, and condiments all the same uniform orange color. In panel two, our two lovebirds show themselves to be true sandwich aficionados: just as a wine connoisseur will take a deep sniff out of their glass and swirl a swig around in their mouth to appreciate the subtle flavors rather than just gulp their wine down thoughtlessly, Wilbur and Iris will spend twenty minutes rubbing their sandwiches against their lips while staring ahead with dull, lifeless eyes, in order to really get the most of out their Jerry’s experience.

Mark Trail, 4/2/14

I know Mark Trail is basically the Kama Sutra of ludicrously stilted dialogue, but “No sir, I would just like to speak to Mr. Trail!” strikes me as even more like something a group of aliens wearing an ill-fitting human skin-suit would say than usual. This may explain why, sometime between panels one and two, our friendly policeman lost two inches and got a different haircut and head-shape.

Dennis the Menace, 4/2/14

“Dennis reveals his parents’ financial troubles to horrified partygoers” is definitely a step up in the menace game! Also, kudos for the municipal water district in the Mitchells’ leafy suburb for calling with shutoff warnings after business hours, I guess?

Apartment 3-G, 4/2/14

I guess Lily is just going to have wait back in the car for however long it’s going to take for newly near-widowed Tommie to strike up a flirtatious romance with Dr. Riley, the sassy large animal vet. “Wait a minute, Josh,” you’re asking. “How can you be sure they’re flirting? Also, where’s this horse they’re talking about?” The answer to both questions is that that “horse” and “colt” are both euphemisms for Dr. Riley’s penis.

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B.C., 4/1/14

B.C. was groundbreaking in a number of ways when it debuted in the late 1950s, but if you were born in the ’70s or ’80s, probably your chief memory of it is how it came to reflect creator Johnny Hart’s sincere and also somewhat aggressive Christianity. Hart died in 2007, with a new creative team led by Hart’s grandson taking over, and after a rough start B.C. has settled back into the groove as a perfectly serviceable legacy syndicated comic strip that will continue to extract declining revenue from the print newspaper industry until that industry inevitably collapses in the next 10 to 15 years.

Anyway, while I have no clue as to the religious convictions of the current strip creative team, the universe of B.C.’s cavemen has been free of Christianity or indeed any other identifiable religion from our own world over the past seven years. But today’s strip reveals that the characters are still subject to the whims of a capricious and cruel deity — specifically, of MASON, whose signature stands in for the ineffable godhead like the flaming Aleph of Jewish mysticism. “APRIL FOOL’S” the god-name announces, as one of its puny creations, expecting only a pleasant swim, plummets to an agonizing death, his final moments spent in confusion and terror.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/1/14

Meanwhile, poor Uriah the mailman, the only representative of the hated Federal government who dares to set foot in Hootin’ Holler, is about to be subject to a much more human prank. What lurks in that mailbox? An angry baby rattlesnake? A rabid raccoon? A low-grade explosive device? Whatever it is, it’s bound to be hilarious, for people who aren’t Uriah!