Post Content

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.

Post Content

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!

Post Content

Mark Trail, 3/31/14

As was foretold in prophecy Friday, Mark has shrugged off a sucker-punch to the face and responded with fisticuffs of his own, somehow managing to wind up and knock Marlin down with a right hook despite literally being an inch and a half away from him. Still, this victory is bittersweet, as Mark looks poignantly at the avalanche of sea turtle eggs cascading comically out of Marlin’s green poachin’-sack. Yes, there’s an exclamation point at the end of his dialogue, but based on his stricken facial expression I would guess that this is as close as we’ve ever come to seeing Mark on the verge of tears, bereft over the senseless loss of endangered animal life.

By the way, is sea turtle egg-poaching an actual thing? Like, could those eggs ever hatch now that they’ve been removed from their nest and plopped in a big pile in a bag? Do people try to keep sea turtles as pets? Do people eat sea-turtle eggs? Have we been reading the wrong meaning of “poaching” in this storyline all along?

Apartment 3-G, 3/31/14

Thank goodness Tommie has rented a freakishly enormous car from the 1940s so that there’s plenty of room for her deer friend to … sit? stand? … in the back seat. I love the way Tommie just talks to Lily like she can understand English, while the deer stares ahead with its black soulless eyes, thinking about murder.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/31/14

Good lord, Snuffy’s disgust with Jughaid is palpable. “I don’t care if he is kin, I ain’t gonna have no aesthete living under my makeshift roof!”

Pluggers, 3/31/14

Pluggers are just straight-up car thieves and don’t care what you think about it.