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Archie, 7/31/13

One of my favorite Idle Comics-Reading Pastimes involves trying to figure out the original publication date of any given stretch of Archie newspaper comics reruns. The use of Beanie Babies as a cultural touchstone places this one pretty firmly in the mid 1990s. Along the way, the strip also reveals the shortcomings of the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000’s linear humor-logic. Presumably its legal module made sure that it used the generic “bean bags” instead of the registered trademark “Beanie Babies,” a formulation that I’m pretty sure no actual human ever uttered. This leads into a distasteful punchline about Jughead making sweet love to whatever soft, cushy surface is most capable of enabling his extreme laziness.

Hi and Lois, 7/31/13

The bedroom eyes Hi and Lois are making at each other here imply that this “dressing up” banter isn’t so much about “weren’t things better in the ’50s, when women’s autonomy was strictly limited” so much as it’s about “I’d sure find it sexually arousing if I came home to find you dressed sexily, for sex.” It’s a weird conversation to have right in front of the kids at the kitchen table, but it’s also weird to have the kitchen table three feet away from the front door of your house, so who am I to question how they do things in this family.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/31/13

Ha ha, but wouldn’t it be funny if the depictions of U.S. statesmen on our currency were sentient beings? “Oh, God, I’ve been smothered in there for an eternity! At last, I can breathe again! Wait … what … are you feeding me into some infernal machine? NO PLEASE I BEG OF YOU NOOMMMphhh”

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Slylock Fox, 7/30/13

Longtime readers know that I’m intensely interested in the moment in the Slylockverse’s history when the animals achieved sentience and rose up to overthrow their human oppressors. While I’ve speculated that there’s a rational, scientific explanation for the beastocracy, I’m also open to the idea that one day the animals simply awoke and, with the intelligence gap closed, overwhelmed humanity with sheer numbers. Today’s Six Differences strip hints at this possibility. “Wait a minute,” the big long-neck bird suddenly realized with perfect clarity. “I don’t have to sit around waiting for what crumbs this guy is going to bestow upon me. I can just yank the whole bag out of his lap and have it all for myself. See ya, chump!” As the man watches the bird walk off in blank terror, the other birds, only a few seconds behind in their emergence into sentience, begin to descend.

Heathcliff, 7/30/13

Speaking of terrifying animal scenarios, Heathcliff is usually the king of sang-froid, and I think this is the first I’ve seen him in a state of genuine panic. And well should he be! The prospect of dogs gaining the power of flight thanks to magic urine-powered hoverpads ought to terrify everybody.

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Shoe, 7/29/13

So, here you go: Shoe finally takes a stab at acknowledging that its denizens are sentient bird-men and -women, with puzzling results. First of all, I can’t believe I never made the flappers-bird connection before, and am reasonably sure that there’s some elaborate sentient-bird-women-as-flappers fan drawings out there, possibly on DeviantArt, possibly in the context of an all-sentient-bird Great Gatsby graphic novel. And yet the whole potential crossover is wasted, for the most part. Instead, Loon just tells a weird story about how his aunt used her unremarkable-in-this-context power of flight to … transcend to a higher plane of existence? Like in Jonathan Livingston Seagull? Or maybe she just died of exhaustion/oxygen deprivation? Anyway, if there were ever a situation where Shoe’s patented goggle eyes of horror would be appropriate, it’s this one — “let me tell you a fun story about my aunt that ends in her disappearance and probable death” — but instead the Perfesser just stares straight ahead with dead-eyed numbness. He stopped listening to Loon hours ago. He just says “Yeah?” during conversational lulls to feign politeness.

Gil Thorp, 7/29/13

It may be no Gail Martin mystery, but this summer’s Gil Thorp storyline has been zany in a low-key way, involving an amiable, Alzheimer’s-stricken ex-pro-wrestler and his also ex-pro-wrestler son wandering the nation on the dad’s whims. Today, our senile king of the squared circle is going to teach One-Armed Steve some wrestling moves! Steve seems amused and convinced this will all be in fun, about which he may turn out to be mistaken.

Family Circus, 7/29/13

I guess the tattered state of Jeffy’s blanket is meant to indicate that it’s a well-loved security object for him, but I prefer a different interpretation: it’s decayed during his multi-decade, Rip van Winkle-style nap. No, I’m not sure why Jeffy hasn’t gotten older or why his clothes and house are still intact, even though his family long since moved away and/or died. The important thing is that Jeffy has been thrust alone into a world he no longer understands, OK? Just … just give me this.