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Some unpleasant surprises

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Marvin, 3/19/21

I assume Marvin creator Tom Armstrong has been drunk with power ever since he successfully fought off a lawsuit filed by a Mercedes dealership who was cruelly lampooned on comics pages across the nation for alleged bad service, but let me say this: the Flintstones, along with all other intellectual property developed by Hanna-Barbera, are currently owned by Warner Bros. Animation, a subsidiary of AT&T, which is a company with substantially deeper pockets and a much stronger urge to dominate than some hapless car dealer.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/19/21

The idea that divorces in Hootin’ Holler are settled via some legal process with attorneys involved, rather than by violent multigenerational clan feuds, has frankly shaken me to my very core.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/19/21

Wait, so Buck is supposed to be … comedy relief? He’s intended to be funny, you say? Huh. Huh.

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Shaftception

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Crankshaft, 3/18/21

Oh, it turns out that this strip was setting up a Christopher Nolan-style chronologically disjointed narrative in this week’s Crankshaft, where each strip pushes back further into the past to peel open another layer of the story. How do I feel about this bold storytelling experiment, you may ask? Well, it’s ending (beginning?) with Crankshaft in significant physical pain, so I’m feeling pretty good about it, actually.

Mark Trail, 3/18/21

The finally-wrapped-up initial New Model Mark Trail storyline established that there are multiple generations of Mark Trials (Marks Trail?), which I guess raises the question of which of the strip’s adventures had which generation Trail as the protagonist? Well, it turns out the rerun we got right before the reboot, where Mark refused to attend an industry awards ceremony to tend to his sick dog but ended up winning anyway, was totally this guy. Maybe if he had shown up in person he would’ve gotten the real award, crafted from the finest pewter crystal, rather than the cheap lightweight glass version they sent him to save on shipping costs.

Dennis the Menace, 3/18/21

The true menace here is that, no doubt by some combination of threats and endless whining, Dennis has convinced his parents to serve bloody, raw hamburger for dinner tonight. What’s the matter, Henry and Alice? Not hungry? You’ve barely touched your plates!

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I wanna see Rex do gangster slang (he will absolutely refuse to do gangster slang)

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/17/21

“Butch Belluso” is of course, Rene Belluso, who once upon a time was Sarah’s art teacher, hired by the mob queenpin who had taken Sarah under her wing and also employed Rene for a little light art forgery. Since he parted company from his erstwhile employers, he’s engaged in a number of scams, like comics fraud and new age flim-flammery and even a little light COVID grifting, so he’s definitely a guy not into “the law” or whatever, but he’s never exactly struck me as the type who’d kidnap anyone, or go out in a blaze of glory in a shootout with the cops, no matter what literary genre he’s situated in. Then again, this is Sarah’s fantasy, so maybe despite her amnesia her subconscious remembers that he once got to order her around, and now she wants him dead from multiple gunshots to the face.

Hi and Lois, 3/17/21

As a fan of Thirsty sticking to his canonical role as this strip’s alcoholic, I’m not troubled by his declaration that he’s “on the wagon” today: his rumpled appearance and his immediate substitution of another chemical fix for his troubles (the raw uncut sugar in Lucky Charms marshmallows) tells me that this isn’t a serious stab at recovery, but rather just another move in his roller-coaster life of hilarious drunkery.

Mary Worth, 3/17/21

Guys, there are few bigger fans of dogs and the work they do than me, but … this is a lot, right? I’m beginning to think that a dog, or maybe a top-flight content marketing agency hired by all dogs everywhere, wrote this.