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Crock, 11/29/21

“Hmm,” I bet you’re thinking, “a four-digit number that turns out to be the price in dollars and cents of an entire barrel of wine sure is a forced way to do a ‘Ha ha, Maggot is cheap!’ joke.” Well, consider this: 1830 is actually the year the French began their conquest of the Maghreb. So perhaps this is actually a way for French Legionnaire Maggot to taunt his Algerian wife Grossie over her colonial servitude! Surely this is so grotesque a possibility that we can’t blame the waiters for desperately trying to spin some other possibility into existence.

Crankshaft, 11/29/21

Hey, remember a couple weeks ago when Lillian browbeat a local youth into helping her do a Zoom book panel and then was a real dick about it the whole time? Well, turns out that she tried to do a slideshow using an actual slide projector in the process, which I’m sure was a big disaster that she probably blamed the local youth for.

Gil Thorp, 11/29/21

Ah, yes, finally, the big mystery of “Is Chance Macy going to play college football and if so where” is about to get resolved, and frankly if none of the actual characters in this strip are going to get excited about it, I’m not sure why we should even try.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/28/21

If you want the answer to “Why is Rex Morgan boring now” in a nutshell, here it is: one of the strip’s more devious characters has to be begged to start some drama and she simply doesn’t care. Her brother is literally shoving documents in her face that say “That big secret you just heard about on the news, that everyone wants to know the answer to? Well here’s the answer!!!” And she’s just like “Enh, probably it isn’t and if it is why bother.” Remember, this strip’s readers had to deal with someone they barely know getting blown up off-panel just a few weeks ago, so they aren’t emotionally prepared for any excitement right now.

Marvin, 11/28/21

The rhythm of today’s Marvin is truly shambolic, the narrative lurching about in fits and starts and ending with a punchline delivered by an irritatingly out-of-the blue talking gorilla. Still, I kind of appreciate that the strip pauses for a panel where Marvin locks eyes with us and says, smiling, “Grandpa’s at the doctor all the time. He’s very sick and in constant pain. He’ll be dead soon!”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/27/21

Here’s the thing, folks: I spent a lot of brain power this week remembering the various Funkyverse familial relationships and it’s supposed to be a holiday, so I refuse to do the digging through my archives/mind palace necessary to determine whether Edward’s older sister is in fact Nancy — the One Designated Bad Rex Morgan Teen who does Bad Teen things like throwing superspreader parties and vandalizing mobsters’ cars — or is maybe just some other girl with similar hair. Anyway, it turns out that that despite Rex and June’s sigh of relief about Sarah’s non-fame, it turns out that becoming a new coauthor on a wildly successful series of children’s books does in fact spark curiosity, and if you have a big mouth about it Nancy (?) is going to blow your cover sooner or later.

Marvin, 11/27/21

Marvin has been doing a whole week about the title character hanging out with “Sirexa” (get it, it’s like Siri + Alexa!!!) and since we’re still in the Thanksgiving weekend here I’m going to go ahead and give thanks that, when the time came to do the hilarious joke about this digital assistant device eating, we did not discover the round opening at the top of its body to be an awful, jawless mouth, like a lamprey’s or something similarly unpleasant. We can’t see whatever no doubt nightmarish maw it’s now shoveling popcorn into, but at least we were spared that.