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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/30/21

I’m reasonably sure that I’ve never seen the blessings of the Anglo-Norman system of trial by jury granted to the people of Hootin’ Holler, who as near as I can tell are subject to their unelected sheriff and judge, a regime whose arbitrary nature is at least somewhat tempered by its ineffectiveness. Presumably, however, the town courthouse is a relic of the days when the Holler was part of the now only dimly remembered Newnited States. Nobody is sure what the jury box is for, but today Snuffy and Lukey are going to use it as a place to hang out and laugh theatrically at someone else getting sent to jail for once.

Gil Thorp, 11/30/21

Wow, if you had asked me to guess “so what’s the resolution to this Chance Macy storyline going to be, the one that the strip keeps teasing as super boring,” I don’t think I would’ve picked “Chance is going to Canada to play metric football in front of nobody” in a million years! Kudos to Gil Thorp for keeping me guessing in this extremely low-stakes way, I guess?

Hi and Lois, 11/30/21

I’m not usually one to be like “Oh, the children have been raised on digital machines and have no soul, ours is the last truly human generation that will ever walk the earth,” but today’s Hi and Lois, in which the Flagston kids declare their excitement for getting “all kinds of food” delivered and then rattle off not the varieties of food a person might savor but rather than names of various apps, as if their appetite could be sated by a stream of 1s and 0s generated by gullible venture capital, has truly sent a chill up my spine.

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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!”