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Marvin, 1/17/22

Man, say what you will about Marvins where the joke is about pooping or peeing, but at least I have some grip on what’s happening in those (Marvin is pooping or peeing, and it’s disgusting). This one, I … am a little lost on? Like technically there are a near-infinite number of vacations you could label a “no skiing” vacation, but I guess that’s supposed to be where you go to a ski lodge but don’t ski, and just drink hot cocoa by the fire instead? But also, did Jeff just forget about this long-planned vacation coming up, because I feel like Jenny shouldn’t have such a sunny smile in panel two if he did. It’s weird! It’s not totally insane or anything, but the whole thing’s a little bit off! That’s why I propose an alternate interpretation: Jenny has set aside the coming weekend for her and Jeff to finally kick the cocaine habit, and Jeff’s not super jazzed about it.

Mary Worth, 1/17/22

Oh, hey, so, uh, in other news, Wilbur is alive, everybody! Wilbur … is alive? Somehow? Did we ever establish where this cruise was happening? Because if it was a west coast cruise, it’s not like there are tons of islets within drunken floating distance of the cruise lanes. That’s why I’m hoping that Wilbur has actually reached one of the upper levels of hell for comic characters, which is that you have to be the hilariously disheveled guy on a tiny desert island with two palm trees in a New Yorker cartoon. Or, better, that’s his corpse, and for the rest of the week we get to watch crabs eat it.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 1/16/22

I just want to offer my 100% unironic appreciation of everything going on in this panel. I love the weird angle we’re seeing Shady from, I love his expression as he watches his nemeses through the grate, I love the way he’s cradling that bag of cash and the way Max is ogling the few scattered bills on the floor, and I definitely love the look of smug triumph on Sly’s face as he gets ready to hit the dial button, knowing exactly what’s coming next. Shady is definitely dumb enough to leave his ringer on while doing crimes, but is he dumb enough to give his cell number to Slylock in the first place? Maybe, but it’s just as likely that the Forest Kingdom’s NSA equivalent is happy to hand out the phone numbers of known undesirables to law enforcement. There’s no such thing as human rights in a state where humans have been hunted to near extinction!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/16/22

Oh, man, remember a few years ago how Snuffy found his dad in the woods where he had been asleep for decades, Rip Van Winkle style? You’d think that would make him really appreciate the world’s possibilities and work to make the most of his new lease on life, but no, he’s just going back to chicken-based crime. You hate to see it!

Funky Winkerbean, 1/16/22

I sincerely hope that that is the helmet that Bull died in. We deserve that much.

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 1/15/22

One of the last pure pleasures of social media is when some bizarre bit of pop culture ephemera from decades past gets surfaced and passed around, and last summer many of us had some good fun with “Inhalants,” a song from McGruff the Crime Dog’s 1987 anti-drug album that, as a viral tweet put it, “sounds like New Order.”

So, I have one note on this otherwise amazing song, which is that “inhalants” is a pretty technical term and probably most kids don’t know that it means, like, huffing paint or sniffing glue, but otherwise this a banger of a track that manages to pack a lot of emotions in to the gimmicky McGruff voice, and I immediately thought of it when I saw today’s Mother Goose and Grimm. This McGruff? The one with the thousand-yard stare and a barful of empty shot glasses in front of him? That’s the guy who sings “they can break you in two” about inhalants and you can tell he knows exactly what he’s talking about.

Family Circus, 1/15/22

Guys, I’ve been spending a lot of time staring at this Family Circus, in which Billy eagerly stares at his mother in a low-cut dress and talks about people getting their eyes knocked out, and trying to come up with an Oedipus joke and I just can’t quite make the pieces fit together. I feel like I’ve let you all down on this one and promise to do better in the future.

Dennis the Menace, 1/15/22

A child amazed by the number of screens in a multiplex but angry that no Western films are on offer? The only menace he represents is one to the integrity of the space-time continuum if he ever returns to his native year of 1953 with knowledge of the future!

Mary Worth, 1/15/22

“Well, he didn’t jump, exactly … here, let me show you the video, but hold on a second while I queue up ‘Yakety Sax.’”