Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 6/29/12

I had never given it much thought, but I can see why Les, a goateed self-styled intellectual, would feel a certain affection for Snowball, the character in Animal Farm meant to represent Leon Trotsky. It’s more of a stretch, but I’d even be willing to see Les and Funky’s sometimes strained friendship as a metaphor for the relationship between Trotsky and Stalin. You know, anything to move us along to the part where Les gets killed in Mexico by a guy with an axe.

Gasoline Alley, 6/29/12

So this week Gasoline Alley abruptly pulled away from its extremely mildly entertaining storyline about a demon-haunted cat to instead focus on Skeezix’s problems with his electronic equipment. “How could this get any more boring?” I said, but then I got to today’s strip and I was all like “Oh.”

Gil Thorp, 6/29/12

“You know, come over here unannounced and then whine to your two-year-old son about his athletic failures. I can’t decide if it’s more creepy or more pathetic. Is there a word that combines the two? Creepthetic?”

Post Content

Mary Worth, 6/28/12

Wow, so the letters that people write into Wilbur’s Ask Wendy advice column are … kind of abstract? I mean, usually people send notes to advice columnists with very specific questions, like “How can I convince my son to get a job and move out of the house?” or “What’s a polite way to tell my mother-in-law that how I cook isn’t any of her business?” or (scroll down to the second letter, which is the greatest letter to Dear Abby ever written) “My husband wants too much sex, should I let one of my horny friends sleep with him to take the pressure off me?” But if the letter we’re getting a glimpse of here is representative, Wilbur’s fans just write long, rambling diatribes about their overpowering ennui, full of sweeping, nonspecific complaints about our fallen age, and lacking any particular question or request for advice per se. Are these mopey types attracted to Ask Wendy because Wilbur himself is full of quiet but very deep despair, which radiates out on a frequency only other depressives can detect? Or do we have things the wrong way round — has Wilbur in fact been driven to the slough of despond by the incessant soul-crushing letters Wendy receives? You can see that Mary herself, normally indefatigable and chipper, is already buckling under the weight of sadness in panel one.

Wizard of Id, 6/28/12

In much cheerier news, the Black Death has arrived in Id, striking terror into the hearts of its inhabitants. If historical averages hold, the plague will kill a third to two-thirds of the characters in the strip, but we can always hope for more.

Post Content

Blondie, 6/27/12

It’s always the glasses-wearing nerdlinger in the office who’s the first to clue you in on how to use cutting-edge high-tech stuff like “Google search” for work.

Ziggy, 6/27/12

Ziggy’s parrot has taken the liberty of whiting out all the typos in the newspaper, with bird poop.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/27/12

A hitherto unexplored source of Funkyverse misery: local law enforcement is willing and able to dish out brutal beatings to anyone who even hints at DUI or illegal alcohol production.

Hi and Lois, 6/27/12

I originally read Trixie’s “I hope Dawg can wait that long” as a poignant reminder that our pets’ lifespans are shorter than ours, and that Dawg might not still be around by the time Trixie is old enough to take him for a walk. But then I realized it was just a joke about how Dawg is about to pee all over the rug.

Gil Thorp, 6/27/12

Man, with all the exciting teen pregnancy action, Gil Thorp neglected to tell us that the boy’s baseball team was on the verge of winning a championship! Don’t worry, though, they didn’t.