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Funky Winkerbean, 2/20/14

So hey, remember that lady from Monday’s Funky Winkerbean, who deflected a sexual advance by announcing with dead eyes that, despite the fact that she was beautiful, she was broken inside and she hated herself? Well, turns out she’s Cindy Summers, former Westview popular girl and current national news anchor and Funky’s ex-wife! The whole marriage took place during the period when I wasn’t reading the strip, but faithful reader/disturbing Twitter user name Bat Les Moore assures me that this cheery moment happened during their divorce:

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY! Anyway, the residual effects of having been married to Funky probably explain Cindy’s self-loathing, but at least she still has her physical beauty and high-powered job to sustain her! Haha, whoops, except her boss is telling her that she’s too old to be beautiful and that they’re going to fire her, which, while this is obviously the thought process behind a lot of TV news personnel decisions, I’m pretty sure that if you just say it out loud explicitly like this you get extremely sued for age discrimination.

Anyway, not to dwell too much on this strip (haha, who am I kidding, dwelling too much on strips like this are the entire reason why this blog exists) but let’s examine today’s punchline! “It’s the digital age, Cindy … and digital shows your age.” It’s typically Winkerbeanean in that it uses low-level wordplay to let a character know that their life is changing for the worse. But does it make sense? Is TV Executive Man saying that young people, who like computers and don’t watch TV news, will watch TV news if someone young is on TV? Is he saying that Cindy has repeatedly tried and failed to operate computers, smartphones, and other digital devices on-air, further alienating the coveted young person demographic? Is he making reference to the fact that high-def broadcasts, blown up on a 60-inch screen, reveal the slight lines and imperfections on Cindy’s fortysomething visage, forcing the network to hunt after ever younger and smoother-faced anchors? Is he just being a dick, in a way that, I can’t emphasize enough, is totally, 100% legally actionable? Yes, it’s probably the last one.

Beetle Bailey, 2/20/14

Plato’s subtle shift in his third word balloon is instructive here. At first, with fanciful metaphors, he implies that Beetle can never satisfy Sarge with his work ethic. But then he shifts to an idea that, while still out of the reach of a lowly private, is at least within the realm of physical possibility. Sarge, he implies, can be bought. Now we must discover his price.

Spider-Man, 2/20/14

Oh, yeah, so: J. Jonah Jameson is inside the old Iron Man suit, has rigged it up somehow so his crazed eyes and Hitler mustache are visible through the mask, has gone mad with power, is determined to kill Spider-Man, blah blah blah. As you can see in the final panel, he’ll use the one weapon against which Spidey has no defense: crumbling masonry.

Mary Worth, 2/20/14

MARY WORTH IS INVITING TOMMY TO EAT IN HER APARTMENT REPEAT MARY WORTH US GIVING TOMMY AN OPPORTUNITY TO BE EITHER THEATRICALLY CONTRITE OR HILARIOUSLY INAPPROPRIATE ON HER TURF, THREAT LEVEL: AMAZING

Better Half, 2/20/14

Oh hey let’s check in with the Better Half, probably it won’t be an Oedipal nigtmarAAAAUUUUGGGHHH

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Dennis the Menace, 2/19/14

To the extent that anyone anywhere thinks about third-tier characters in Dennis the Menace, they probably have Gina pegged as “vaguely tomboyish but not gender-binary-threateningly non-feminine girl who Dennis finds to be an acceptable companion and maybe nascent crush object, in contrast with Margaret.” But panels like this give us a glimpse at what one must assume was her other traditional role in the strip: as a symbol of the changing face of middle-class America, a sign of the times circa 1960 when the white people of suburbia found that other, slightly different kinds of white people wanted to be their neighbors. And Dennis is on the forefront of this bold social experiment! Papists are A-OK by him! Don’t worry, Joey, this Italian cheese-butter-noodle glop may have a crazy name that ends in a vowel, but it’s pretty much the same cheese-butter-noodle glop we enjoy right here in the USA.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/19/14

I was going to compliment this Snuffy Smith for really getting at something profound and intriguing about the nature of human memory. When I try to remember what my classmates from elementary school look like, even when I feel like I can visualize them pretty clearly, they don’t look like children in my head, and when I look at old yearbooks I’m shocked by how young everyone is. However, I think that’s probably giving the strip far too much credit, and it’s really more likely this is just an ill-fated attempt to launch a Hootin’ Holler Babies spinoff.

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Gasoline Alley, 2/18/14

Oh, hey, Gasoline Alley! I haven’t been bothering you to keep you up with Gasoline Alley, so here’s the deal: the government agents called in to try to figure out how Walt could possibly still be alive were followed by a newspaper reporter, for whom Walt spun a fanciful tale of having discovered the Fountain of Youth in an Egyptian tomb, though given his current state of decrepitude it would’ve been more realistic if he had claimed to have found the Fountain of Eternal Life That Keeps Your Aged And Increasingly Frail Body Alive Beyond Its Natural End Point. Anyway, once word got out people, reacted pretty much as I explained they would when Six Chix did a Fountain of Youth joke, only the canny Walt is using the opportunity to personally profit from others’ gullibility. Should be all fun and games, until the angry mob tears him to bits!

Six Chix, 2/18/14

Speaking of Six Chix, today’s Six Chix has an important lesson for us: that no matter how hard life gets, we should marshall our resources and just hang on and endure and wait for the one thing in life that we want more than anything in the world, which will probably kill us.

Dick Tracy, 2/18/14

Speaking of things I haven’t been bothering to keep you up with, Dick Tracy exists! I’m going to continue to not bother to keep you up on the plot, but I do want to point out that this lady with the off-the-shoulder sweater has been in the strip repeatedly for weeks and this is the first we’ve seen that she goes around barefoot in tattered jeans all the time. Is this what Dick Tracy thinks a hippie looks like? Probably! Anyway, “You see, as Mother Earth’s creation, I must touch her” is a good thing to say to someone if you don’t want them talking to you ever again.

Slylock Fox, 2/18/14

As you all should know, I’m very interested in the moment when the Slylockverse was born, when the animals rose up and overthrew the humans who had reigned over them for far too long. We often catch glimpses of this in the Six Differences strips, though today’s isn’t particularly subtle: a bear, probably a juvenile by the size of him but still plenty big and strong, has burst through the front window of this suburban home, and is about to just start up and mauling some people.