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Dennis the Menace, 4/5/21

I like that these two kids and their moms have similar facial expressions, as if both pairs were mirror images of one another. In particular, I’d like to imagine that, while Dennis is cracking wise about this kid living a life no better than a dog’s, the leashèd child is saying, “Look, mommy, that boy is experiencing freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/5/21

When I first saw this strip today, I assumed that it was maybe the anniversary of the first Mary Worth strip or something and there’d be tributes to our favorite gal all across the King Features comics pages today! But no, apparently all that happened was that someone in the Snuffy Smith creative team thought up this pun and declared “Tarnation, fellers, that there’s good synergy!” (For this bit, I’m assuming that a requirement for working on Snuffy Smith is that you have to talk in the fake and borderline offensive Snuffy Smith hillbilly patois at all times when you’re on the clock.)

Mary Worth, 4/5/21

Anyway, Mary has plenty of time to appear in other comics because, even though we all assumed that this storyline had finally, blessedly reach its natural conclusion and we’d need her back to set up the next one, it turns out that’s not true, at all! In fact, it’s never going to end and this is our hell, just two old people half-heartedly flirting by talking about how great dogs and forgiveness are.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 4/4/21

This is not the first time that Slylock Fox has done a strip where the “solution” is “fans don’t actually lower temperature, so I guess all this wax is going to melt, oh well.” But the previous iteration of this story was just in some bird’s dumb candle store, whereas the stakes here are much higher. This museum is a repository of priceless cultural heritage from the pre-animalpocalypse Before Times, and it’s sad but all too typical that these dim-witted animals that took over our civilization can’t maintain the HVAC systems needed to hold it together.

Mary Worth, 4/4/21

You might recall that way back at the beginning of this interminable storyline, Saul asked Eve if she wanted to go get lunch at the mall. Everything that’s come after has proved that he’s a man who’ll go to any length, including helping an abused woman reach emotional closure and finding a lost dog in the process, to get that food court date. Everyone loves eating at Arby’s and Wetzel’s Pretzels, but you can’t expect Saul to go by himself like some kind of weirdo, can you?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/4/21

You ever see a narration box beg for its own annihilation? Truly, wonders on the comics page never cease.

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Blondie, 4/3/21

Not sure why but I’m very fixated on the choice to do a pink-to-blue gradient in the background here. Specifically, I’m very curious as to whether we’re looking at sunrise or sunset. Typically, Dagwood and Mr. Beasley the mailman crash into one another as Dagwood runs out the door in the morning to catch his carpool, but that usually happens because he’s running late, so it seems unlikely that our notorious snoozemeister would be up and around literally at the break of down. Mostly I’m curious as to whether the madness Mr. Beasley is displaying in today’s strip arises from beginning-of-day manic enthusiasm or end-of-day exhaustion verging on psychosis. I’m sure I could comb through hundreds of Blondie strips looking for clues as to the geographic orientation of the Bumstead home to determine whether we’re looking east or west here, but I’m proud to report that I’m not quite at that level of comics obsession.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/3/21

Man, this strip always does its best to extract grim laffs from its characters’ economically desperate situation, but “Snuffy begs Doc Pritchart to freeze his face into immobility with off-label botox, giving him a marginal advantage in the games of chance where the few circulating dollars in Hootin’ Holler are passed back and forth among the town’s impoverished residents” is really on another level.