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Marvin, 6/23/24

Not to brag or anything, but after nearly 20 years of my doing this blog, my archives page has become a valuable historical resource that anyone can use to explore the history of newspaper comic strips in the 21st century, assuming that the strip you’re looking for was something I thought was interesting or particularly bad or that I could turn into a weird riff on whatever day it was published. I myself cannot keep all this history in my head and frequently turn to the archives for answers to questions like “Have we ever actually seen Marvin’s aunt in the strip before?” It turns out that in 2006 there was a plotline involving his aunt adopting a baby from China named “Ming Ming” whose appearance is extremely off-putting because she looks exactly like a Funko Pop, something I wasn’t able to articulate at the time because, as I discovered after a little research, Funko Pops would not be invented for another five years. I am a wizened old man and I hope that you, my faithful readers, are preparing yourselves to be mummified and entombed with me in the spectacular pyramid of comics jokes I’ve been building over the past two decades.

Wait, where was I? Oh, right, what I’m saying is that I assume the Marvin creative team long ago forgot about poor Ming Ming, just like I had, and presumably they don’t use my archives page for research because they don’t want to read all the mean things I say about their work. It’s not even clear to me that this is supposed to be the same aunt, or if we can even say that there’s a fixed set of Marvin’s relatives that have continuously existed in some sense over the past 20 years. I also don’t know if being part of the neo-rockabilly lifestyle is an established bit of lore about Marvin’s dad’s terrible coworker. I could go back into my archives to find out but, you know what? I’ve already spent enough time digging through the depths of Marvin for one day. Gotta limit my exposure, for my own good.

Shoe, 6/23/24

For reasons unclear to me, Shoe recently decided to bring back Muffy Hollandaise, the Treetops Tattler’s former intern, who stopped appearing in the strip so long ago that my archives would be of no help in learning her secrets. I say the reasons are unclear to me because they reintroduced her as an avowed enemy of her former boss and a successful journalist in an industry that is, if not thriving, then at least doing better than print media; but, despite that set-up, she’s mostly being used like every other character in the strip, which is to say she delivers cruel, wordplay-adjacent zingers. I do have to say that I enjoy the way she leans in to deliver her line here. Lets you know there’s real venom in it.

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Beetle Bailey, 6/22/24

My wife and I are aficionados of real, non-microwave popcorn, and there are two ways to make this at home: you can do it in a metal pot on your stove, or you can use an electric air popper. What you can’t do is just leave a big metal pot on the end table next to your couch, not even plugged into the wall, and then doze off and expect popcorn to manifest itself there. Maybe this makes me a “comics curmudgeon” of some sort, but I think things in comic strips should more or less look like the real physical objects they’re supposed to represent. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Family Circus, 6/22/24

OK, sorry, I love it when Jeffy is dumb, but when Billy is? It’s not cute or charming at all. He’s the eldest and he should know better. You can tell Big Daddy Keane is thinking it too. Sure, the metric system is part of the UN one world government conspiracy to undermine American sovereignty, but that doesn’t excuse Billy from learning the absolute most basic and introductory fact about it, c’mon man.

Mary Worth, 6/22/24

Are you, Wilbur? Are you better? Are you better, really? Have you dealt with all your emotional stuff about your exes and your romantic failure and whatever it was that caused you to think it was a good idea to let your friends and family think for a week that you were dead? Or are you just experiencing the endorphin rush of getting some attention, just like the attention you hoped to get by showing up back home after letting everyone think for a week that you were dead? It’s the second one, right? You just like attention? You haven’t grappled with your many emotional and personality problems, at all?

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The days are at their longest at the comments … they’re at their funniest:

“I like imagining Ian looming over the much shorter Wilbur with a belly laugh, ‘Ho ho ho, a funeral for a goldfish, what wild they think of next?’ like the Jolly Puce Giant.” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

And the runners up? Also funny!

“I’m glad that we have those throwaway panels, because with them we know the exact moment the edibles kicked in.” –pugfuggly

“I like how Saul brought his dog, just to taunt Wilbur that his pet is still alive. This is the kind of cruelty Wlbur so richly deserves.” –astroboy

“School cafeterias have got so dangerous that the kids aren’t even allowed to use knives any more. Sure, it’s hard to cut your fishsticks with your finger, but at least it stops vicious hair-tousling incidents like these from escalating.” –Schroduck

“It’s not real, General Halftrack thought to himself. Remember what your therapist said. Slow, deep breaths. It’s not real. You’re not seeing your soldiers as naked garbage, boiling in their own juices, smelling of decay … no! Keep it together, soldier. Breathe in. You’re not in the camp anymore. It’s not real!” –MasterMahan

“‘Keri Thorp — the catcher — has had a terrific season.’ Come on, everybody know that sports announcers set off appositive phrases with commas!” –Weaselboy

“How would his wife know? Is he wearing a wire?” –MKay

“Amazing that Snuffy Smith first touched the third rail of comics art, the high price of comic books ($6/issue?), before comics-obsessed standby Crankshaft aka Funky Winkerbean II. You go get ’em, semi-anonymous clip art legacy comic producer!” –Bad wolf

“Is there a petition I can sign in support of the colorists’ demand for a pay raise before they’ll resume coloring Dagwood’s chair and the TV table?” –Peanut Gallery

“Hooten’ Holler has a summer reading program? Somewhere there is a traveling librarian transporting books via pack mule with a lot of initiative, if somewhat unrealistic expectations.” –TheDiva

“If ‘Cherry Bimm’ is a punning reference to the late-19th century song ‘Ciribiribin,’ then Dick Tracy is having to go further afield for character names. I miss the days when they could just spell ‘Murder’ or ‘Short’ backwards and call it a day.” –Pozzo

“You’re a plugger if you wake up in pain most mornings because you’re too cheap to shell out for a thicker mattress.” –BigTed

“If you are a comics artist looking for ways to convey horniness using only facial expressions, I recommend every panel of today’s Dick Tracy.’ –lorne

“I’m joking, of course. Obviously our isolated Neo-Pagan compound didn’t impose pandemic restrictions. Now, which outsider do you want to lure in for this year’s wicker man?” –MasterMahan

“Sure, go ahead and talk in Latin or whatever the hell that is. As if your facial hair isn’t alienating enough, Mr No Fun at Parties.” –made of wince

“Points to Helga for creatively skewering an extra box on the horns of her helmet! Fewer points to Hagar for jamming a box all the way down over his head and asphyxiating.” –matt w

“The problem for this Viking is that, outside of mediaeval craft guilds, worker organization hasn’t come up yet. Even if it did come, the general illiteracy makes punny picket signs like ‘Give us a raise or we raze!’ useless to get their point across to the general public.” –Philip

“You know who else doesn’t have to buy clothes? Children, because their mothers buy them! Check your privilege, Jeff!” –Ettorre

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