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Mary Worth, 6/28/22

Has there ever, going all the way back to the ancient Egyptians, been a more perfect match between visual and narrative art as today’s Mary Worth? I’ve studied the subject and feel confident in saying that no, there hasn’t. The image of Dawn loping away from Jared in panel two is absolutely perfect, and the way her legs and arms are positioned lets you know exactly how mismatched her defiant words and her absurd running style must be as Jared watches her flee. Her muted bluish color palette and slip-on shoes somehow just add to her humiliation, for me. But then, how can things get more humiliating for you than having Jared of all people yell “We were friends before … we can be friends again!” at you in a public place where other people can hear it? Well, it’s only Tuesday, so there’s a pretty good chance we’re going to find out.

Sally Forth, 6/28/22

I regret to inform you that Sally and Ted never did get to swing with their hot new neighbor, because it turns out he was just buying the house next door to rent out to people who presumably don’t want anything to do with the Forths either erotically or socially. However, that doesn’t mean Ted won’t get to be sexually humiliated this summer, although finding out that your widowed mother has a new zaddy boyfriend with Celtic tattoos activates a very different kind of kink.

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Gil Thorp, 6/27/22

It’s that time of year again: the time when the baseball season plot keeps rolling ahead in Gil Thorp and you look at the calendar and think “Uh, hey, isn’t school over for the year … pretty much everywhere in the country? Shouldn’t some of these kids have graduated by now?” Instead, we have at least a week left until we get the possibility of a wacky summer storyline, and I guess we need that week to get Marty Moon involved in this somehow. He’s been MIA for months, but now that a questionable Coach Thorp coaching decision has resulted in a media circus (read: one guy with a camera), Marty’s hoping to cash in on that (read: he’s hoping whoever’s filming this will record some b-roll of him doing play-by-play inside his wooden crate that he can use on the page for the GoFundMe campaign he’s launching to buy a bigger crate).

Slylock Fox, 6/27/22

The old Hayes Code had strict rules about depicting criminals as enjoying the fruits of their ill deeds, and today’s Slylock Fox really shows why. Look at Shady Shrew! Who wouldn’t want to live this lifestyle: just chilling out, cooling off your feet in a swift-moving river that appears to be not terribly polluted despite being only a few feet from a major thoroughfare, enjoying a book, an ice-cold soda pop, and a couple of (ALLEGEDLY) stolen chocolate bars. This is what being “shady” gets you, and yet being an upstanding citizen and grocery clerk just results in you being stone cold furious all day. I know which option I’d pick!

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Marvin, 6/26/22

Look, I get it. Marvin, the strip, wants to “have it all” as a comic strip. That means that it wants to be a strip about an infant, and wants to be a strip where that infant delivers sarcastic one-liners and sasses back to his parents. But that can make it difficult for readers — and, frankly, the strip itself — to get a real firm handle on how old Marvin, the character, is supposed to be, from a developmental standpoint. I mean, here, why would you do whole strip where a mom admonishes her kid about wetting the bed, and yet also makes it clear that said kid is wearing diapers, and thus isn’t potty trained yet? It doesn’t add u– wait, what’s that you say? It’s some sick fetish? A fetish where increasingly elaborate piss scenarios are lovingly described to non-consenting newspaper readers everywhere? And it’s been happening in plain view of everyone, for years. Interesting. Interesting. I’ll keep that one in mind next time I read this strip!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/26/22

Hey, folks, remember June’s beloved Aunt (?) Hildy, who showed up on the family doorstep one day and became a live-in babysitter, and we briefly thought she might be a drunk but then it turned out she just took your occasional unplanned nap, and finally Rex reconnected her with her cheating ex-husband Andrzej, who was also an ex-pro wrestler, and they made up and got back together, sexually, and then she moved out? Anyway, the Street Sweeper plot has finally wrapped up, so I guess the new storyline is going to be to find what Hildy and Andrzej are up to. What they appear to be up to is dying of heart disease, so this should be a quick one.

Rhymes With Orange, 6/26/22

Well, this is it, everyone: consensual nonmonogamy has finally hit the newspaper comics. Sure, it’s a radical comic like Rhymes With Orange today, but can the normal ones like Garfield be far behind?