Comment of the Week

I'm really uncomfortable with the way Truck is breaking the fourth wall here. 'Are you this guy's father? You, the reader? Well, if I remember my Roland Barthes then, yes, indeed, you could be described as a metaphorical parent to both of us...’

Spunky The Wonder Squid

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/21/21

Ha ha! It’s funny because Orville in his grief has been forced to part with his ancestral home, his one asset that can raise cash in his crushingly poor community thanks to the interest of a relatively wealthy outsider, but now he’s about to be fleeced of all his money from that outsider’s friend!

Hagar the Horrible, 5/21/21

I’d like to imagine that this strip as originally submitted featured Lucky Eddie sitting astride his centaur steed, but the syndicate editors deemed that “too horny” and demanded that it be redrawn. The revised version, with Eddie riding demurely sidesaddle, is just horny enough.

Mary Worth, 5/21/21

Jeff, you want to live, don’t you? You want to keep on living on this Earth? Then I’m going to need you to choose your next words very carefully.

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/20/21

I’ve mocked them over the years, but I have come to respect the humble comics colorists as a vital part of the operation on the funny pages, and indeed believe sometimes they put more thought into their jobs than the cartoonists do. Take today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, for instance. The title character is, by long established convention, a bird, so her nose/mouth area gets a beak coloring, and her friend/drinking companion, despite her long hair, has a generally bird-like look, so she gets the same treatment. But what about the dude? In the suit? Is he a bird? He has a big pointy nose but he also has a big bulbous chin butt, rather than a chin drawn to resemble basically the bottom half a beak, like the ladies? But Ma Goose’s friend definitely wants to marry and/or fuck this guy, possibly not in that order, so it would be unseemly if he weren’t a bird, right? Better give his whole … nose/mouth … beak-ish … area the established beak aesthetic. Just to be safe!

Family Circus, 5/20/21

Another institution I’ve come to respect more and more over the years is the Family Circus. Say what you will about its treacly aura or its grandma-fridge fanbase, but it does commit to the consistency of its characters no matter where that leads. What I mean to say is that Billy is absolutely the kind of kid who would learn about the distinction between who and whom at school and then try to use his new knowledge to make his mom feel dumb, unsuccessfully.

Dennis the Menace, 5/20/21

A lot of people think Mr. Wilson is grumpy because Dennis is always over at his house annoying him, but there’s more to it than that. For instance, he also resents his wife of many years and thinks his marital life is a prison!

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Mary Worth, 5/19/21

“I certainly would not have formed a romantic liaison with this family had I known about the lapses in judgement lurking in your bloodline!” [throws on life jacket, pinches nose, pitches backwards out of the boat and into the sea]

Gil Thorp, 5/19/21

You ever think that the staff of the Milford Star, a non-student newspaper produced and read by adults, are a little too up-to-date on what the local teenagers are up to?

Pluggers, 5/19/21

Sure, it would make a plugger’s life easier in some ways if he allowed himself to form professional or personal relationships with people with non-Anglo-Saxon surnames. But a man has to have a code, you know?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/19/21

DAMN IT THIS JOKE DOESN’T WORK IF WE CAN’T SEE INSIDE THE CAVE

IT COULD BE REAL NICE IN THERE