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Hagar the Horrible, 7/6/21

Ha ha! It’s funny because Lucky Eddie has made this same silly dad joke repeatedly, every time Hagar’s warband comes to sack this tiny little village, which, again, has happened often enough for everyone to get sick of the joke. Can you imagine the horror? Can you imagine these defenseless villagers forced to give up whatever meager amounts of wealth they’ve been able to accumulate since the last raid or suffer ghastly, violent consequences? Can you imagine them hiding in the ruined castle, once a symbol of the Carolingian Empire that restored peace and order to Western Europe, but now just an empty shell as the grandsons and great-grandsons of Charlemagne squabble amongst themselves, leaving the periphery of the Empire to rot? I’m sure they too would see the humor in Eddie’s little jest, were they not cringing in terror in some dark hiding spot somewhere!

Marvin, 7/6/21

If you only knew about Marvin from my blog, you might have a slanted view of the strip as being primarily about pooping. That’s not true, though; it’s really about a smug nightmare baby who, among his many other bad qualities, can dish it out but can’t take it. (Both “it”s in that sentence, to be perfectly clear, refer to poop.)

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Family Circus, 7/5/21

Happy 4th of July (Observed), everybody! On this sacred holiday, I have some news for you: The Keane Kids are America. Jeffy, in particular, is America. Doing something the stupidest possible way, and initially everyone is horrified and embarrassed by you, but then you end up winning, even though you’ve broken all the rules and you don’t “technically” win and everyone things you’re an idiot, but you’ve still won in every way that matters? That’s America, to me, and I think it’s beautiful.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/5/12

OK, this is a twist that I did not see coming and I kind of love it? For Sarah, engaging in creative work wasn’t meant to be part of a path to fame and fortune! She merely hoped to egg others into creating their own work in a shared universe, producing a virtuous cycle in which we all have more content to enjoy! Thanks to the weird stasis of comic-book time, Sarah, who has been a child for literally decades, probably has a vague memory of the glory days of fanfic group blogs on LiveJournal or whatever, but now lives in a sterile world of hypermonetization that her old soul rejects.

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Mary Worth, 7/4/21

Not too much to say about Shauna vs. Ashlee: The Rumble At The Clinic For Drew’s Love except that the art here genuinely delights me. The dynamism of the hair-pulling in the middle row, the striking series of symmetries in the bottom row — it’s all great. I’m very sad that readers who don’t get the throwaway panels are missing out on the extreme Shauna closeup and quote from Yungblud (definitely an artist that I, a cool young person, had heard of and didn’t have to look up on Wikipedia to learn that he and Halsey broke up because they “worked better as friends”). Anyway, the next time this strip spends another six months on “dogs are good, actually,” we’ll have this moment to reflect back on and sustain us.

Hi and Lois, 7/4/21

I’m absolutely dying for an insight into whatever editorial process within King Features and/or Walker Brown Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC led to notorious local drunk Thirsty Thurston pointing to a box full of obviously illegal fireworks and calling them “legal fireworks.” Honestly the only way this would be funnier would be if Thirsty were doing an exaggerated wink at the reader when he said it, or if he blew several fingers off in the final panel.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 7/4/21

I’m not even going to bother with today’s dumb “mystery” and instead want to draw your attention to the Frankenstein-style monster looming in the bathroom doorway. It’s truly tragic that Count Weirdly, one of the last living humans in this animal-dominated world, is so lonely that he’s stitched together a shambolic golem out of the no doubt numerous human corpses available and animated it using forbidden science, just to have a friend.