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Rhymes With Orange, 7/12/23

One of my biggest beefs with several of the more popular religious cosmologies is the concept of hell: the idea that anything you could do in a finite lifetime could be worthy of infinite punishment just seems wildly unbalanced to me. (Honestly nothing we do could possibly be good enough to merit infinite reward either, but I have a lot less problem with that because I’m a big softie.) Theological sophisticates will tell you that the real punishment you get in hell is separation from God’s grace, but I’m willing to bet that most people who believe in hell think it consists of very real and very agonizing endless physical torture, which makes the whole thing even more abhorrent to me.

Now, I’m not such a scold that I’m can’t appreciate cartoonish depictions of hell — like, I don’t think you should drop pianos on people from a great height either, but I still enjoy classic Warner Brothers cartoons. Even in those cases, though, I’m always struck by the extent to which gruesome torment is at the core of the joke. Sometimes it’s in iconography that everyone kind of ignores — does anyone really think about why the devil is always depicted holding a pitchfork? it’s not a fun reason! — but sometimes it’s pretty deliberate. In this strip, I love that the slot machines themselves are fiery hot, leaving the poor damned players in agony as they pull the lever over and over again (and, presumably, never win). Do you think they’re kept in place by some mental block that makes them unable to leave the machine, perhaps mirroring a vice they were guilty of in life? Or are there just some chains or something at their feet that we can’t see, due to all the flames that are eternally burning their flesh?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/12/23

The bad news is that Sheriff Tait, the only law enforcement officer in the community of Hootin’ Holler, died from massive blood loss and organ damage after being mauled by a vicious bear. The good news is that this saved him from an even worse fate: dying slowly and terribly from the rabies that he contracted from a bat who bit him just moments before the bear caught up with him.

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Judge Parker, 7/11/23

Josh, the world cries out with one voice, how’s Sam and Abbey’s sex vacation going? Well, they just had just gotten out of cell phone coverage range when someone intentionally (?) rammed their car and ran off, leaving an unconscious toddler behind, who Sam and Abbey decided to carry with them on the miles-long walk to their cabin, where a landline awaited them. So, uh, the sex vacation was not going great, in other words! But good news: the little tyke woke up and, understandably, immediately started screaming and fleeing into the woods away from the total strangers who were taking her who knows where. So … sex vacation is back on? More on this story as it develops.

Gil Thorp, 7/11/23

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy (with Gil’s entire family no-shows at his big awards ceremony), the second time as farce (Gil’s kids there to cheer him on but Mimi off somewhere else, presumably banging her golf coach).

Mary Worth, 7/11/23

Now, you might think the implication here is that Mary was only one of many people who reported ambiguous but suspicious dog park adjacent behavior to the police, but let’s look at the facts. Mary is a careful and methodical person and she doesn’t pop a bunch of popcorn in order to gloatingly eat it in front of the 6 o’clock news on the off chance that one phone call did the trick. No, I think that just off panel, there are pile of burner phones and an electronic voice-altering gadget that helped her make sure that justice was done.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/11/23

Sorry to have misspoken last week: Rex and June’s loutish neighbor lost an eye to his post-July 4th fireworks, not a hand, and the whole family was too drunk to drive themselves to the hospital so Rex volunteered to do it. Anyway, Travis is “turning that frown upside down” by thinking about how understaffed emergency rooms are and all the delicious pills they probably just leave out unattended!

Dustin, 7/11/23

Man, this sort of dead-eyed literalism is more menacing than anything Dennis ever came up with. I guess it’s what you’d expect from a child who’s decided to make exactly one friend, and that friend is an adult, and that adult is Dustin.

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Gasoline Alley, 7/10/23

Obviously the art in Gasoline Alley is not what you call realistic — see for instance, Rufus’s whole [gestures vaguely at his grotesque face] deal. So while it’s common in real life for a loose-fitting hospital gown to slip down the shoulder of a supine patient still groggy from a head injury, in this context it’s a deliberate choice — a choice to make Rufus look sexy. I don’t care for it. Don’t care for it one bit!

Hagar the Horrible, 7/10/23

Oh, man, for all those years of Lucky Eddie dating a mermaid, he’s been saying “Oh, it’s not that weird, she still has a human top half, ha ha,” when all this time she’s just been a gateway romance leading to much more extreme sea life-fucking.

Gil Thorp, 7/10/23

Just a year ago, the Barajas Era of Gil Thorp began with Gil receiving the Jack Berrill Coach of the Year award. Now Year 2 B.E. is underway and Gil is … receiving the Jack Berrill Coach of the Year Award. What, you thought someone else was going to get an award named after the guy who created the strip? Get real.

Mary Worth, 7/10/23

Hey, everyone! Please add “carrying a leash while stepping into or out of a van” to the list of activities that could get you shot in the back while “resisting arrest.”