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Hagar the Horrible, 12/5/21

Yet another example of why the so-called “throwaway” panels at the top of a Sunday strip, which are excised in some paper layouts and thus need to include a standalone joke, are so important to the overall vibe. When you know that getting cucked by a court jester is one of Hagar’s literal nightmares, this incident at the tavern takes on a much darker tone.

Family Circus, 12/5/21

Remember, folks, old people are an endless reservoir of knowledge, and there are three distinct ways their pearls of wisdom can be passed on: they can say it to you directly, they can deliver it to an unseen audience while you’re in the background, or they can tell it to a little kid who then immediately goes and reports it to you in the next room. We hope this cartoon has helped bridge the “generation gap.”

Mary Worth, 12/5/21

MEANWHILE … Wilbur has given his fish gender-reversed versions of his and Estelle’s names? Oh no. Oh no.

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Mary Worth, 12/4/21

Look, Wilbur, they’re fish. They’re fish! They’re fine, but the gulf between their world and a human’s is much wider than between, say, a human and a cat or dog, and no real emotional bond is going to arise. So you see, she can never love them like she loved y– ohhh, I get it now.

Gil Thorp, 12/4/21

Gotta admit that I’m kind of enjoying how this Gil Thorp storyline is wrapping up: will all the teen characters just shouting the things they’ve learned (?) over the course of the fall at each other at a rapid clip while standing on furniture. Have you kids all internalized these little life lessons? No? Too bad, basketball starts next week!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/4/21

The Hootin’ Holler setting of this strip has always been one created by and for flatlanders to play around with a very specific set of stereotypes about hillbilles, which has been going on for as long as anyone reading this has been alive, so at some level it’s kind of instructive to read it as “what do people living in mainstream America think life is like in Appalachia, or possibly what life was like in Appalachia during the Great Depression?” Anyway, the answer provided by today’s strip is “Well, there’s big piles of animal shit everywhere, but the native peoples have made an alliance with the amphibian world to help mitigate the negative side effects.”

Shoe, 12/4/21

“Yes, you read that right: the cast members gave birth on stage, only for their newly laid eggs to be cracked open, cooked, and devoured to the horror of the audience. We’re birds, remember? Birds! Also, this newspaper only has two employees, so we’re a little loose about what goes into our sensationalist crime coverage and what goes into theater reviews.”

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Time keeps on slippin’ into the future, and it’s now the first comment of the week of the last month of 2021:

“For all that Mary talks Wilbur up, she would flounder in a heartbeat if someone suggested that she just date Wilbur herself. ‘Oh, he’s … charming in his own endearing, quirky way but not that I would. I have standards … I mean, I’m loyal to Jack … John … J-Jeff … the doctor.” –Needless_Exposition

Runners up are hilarious as always!

“Grandpa longs for the days when gorillas were seen masturbating and not heard.” –Scratchy Scrotum LXIX

“Nancy may be a villain, but she’s still a Rex Morgan villain and she knows the importance of doing her job as slowly and ineffectively as possible.” –TheDiva

“Enjoying the truly demented economics of buying cheap wine by the barrel, then decanting it into a bottle, but then still pricing it by the barrel. The real comedy here is the terrible restaurant management.” –Schroduck

“DID YOU KNOW: Microsoft PowerPoint was released 34 yea– no, you know what, we don’t even have to get this detailed. DID YOU KNOW: The 21st century has been underway for over two decades, at least a quarter of Lillian’s life, if not closer to a third.” –Dan

“Look, I can accept that Maggot and Grossie have no chins. I can accept that Grossie’s mouth somehow magically exists on the outside of her face covering. I can even accept that the chin-privileged waiters don’t remark on these things out of some sense of etiquette. But if you’re going to introduce wine into the equation, I need to see Maggot tipping the top of his head back like a trash can lid, I need to see Grossie pouring the contents of her glass into the moving target at the center of her chest, and I need to see the waiters running off into the desert, where they’d rather die of heatstroke and dehydration than witness such horrors ever again.” –Doctor Moreau

“Hi and Lois: Putting the ‘app’ in ‘appetite’ since … I dunno … today, I guess.” –Pozzo

“Once again, players from the football team are standing on the cafeteria tables and yelling nonsense about their personal lives. Milford High School must be a surreal place for the students who don’t participate in Gil’s authoritarian sports regime.” –jroggs

“‘Jay Walker, eh? Guilty. Death by exsanguination out at Split Tooth Rock. Lordy, appeasin’ the blood thirst of the ol’ gods sure got easier after we set up this fake court and just sacrifice every minor offender.’ ‘Exsangen-wha’, yer honor?’ ‘Bleedin’ out, Smif. Yer guilty too, of disrespectin’ the court. Out to Split Tooth with ya.’” –Voshkod

“You know how many leg lifts it takes to get butt muscles to get that Easter Island chin look? A lot.” –Jerp+Jump

“Just look at Curtis’s dad’s expression in the final panel. That is the look of a man who has seen some shit. Ghost shit. All over the bathroom. Thank god he finally persuaded that damn ghost to flush the toilet after its unholy acts of defecation, he thinks wearily to himself.” –glitchcraft

“The secretary is fresh from the agency, so she hasn’t learned to say things like, ‘Lam it, it’s the fuzz!’ yet.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“Sure, you can ‘be yourself‘ around Wilbur — I mean, who gives a shit what Wilbur thinks?” –Deacon Blues

“I can’t believe that Roz — jaded, seen-it-all Roz — would be truly shocked by this feeble punchline. So my head canon is that she does this sarcastically whenever her customers crack wise.” –Joe Blevins

“Loretta doesn’t need Twitter when she has access to internet’s premiere platform for long-form essays: YouTube. Just imagining a page full of videos with titles like ‘My husband sucks (and I have the receipts!)’, each over 3 hours long.” –pugfuggly

“The Red Shirt’s stance in the Lockhorns is the best thing that comic has had in a while. He looks not only angry at the Lockhorns but at the reader as well.” –BeckoningChasm

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