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Shoe, 12/15/19

Ha ha, you know what’s a novel part of modern life? A “drive-thru” window, assuming you consider the 1970s and ’80s, when drive-thru windows became omnipresent on fast food restaurants, to be recent enough that someone might find their existence noteworthy! Anyway, what today’s Shoe asks you to imagine is this: what if there were a mortuary that had a “drive-thru drop-off window,” and while drive-thru windows are usually a means by which you can access an establishment’s goods or services without leaving your car (something already available to funeral customers), the implication of “drive-thru drop-off” seems to be that you’d drive up to the mortuary with a corpse in your car, and just heave it out your window and into the funeral home, then drive off, presumably to have your car’s upholstery cleaned, because of the dead body smell. Pretty funny, huh? Yes, this is definitely the juxtaposition of two discordant ideas for comical effect!

Panel from The Lockhorns, 12/15/19

One would assume that whatever gelatinous off-green mass is on everyone’s plates here is the evening’s main course, so it’s honestly weird that Leroy is only now pulling out this even more inscrutable selection of appetizers. Presumably their preparation was terribly botched even by Loretta’s standards and the decision was not to serve them, but then Leroy fished them out of the trash and stashed them at the ready on the off chance that a wordplay opportunity like this would present itself. Dinner with these two must truly be among the most tiresome things anyone could imagine.

Marvin, 12/15/19

I revisit the concept of comic book time, in which characters always exist in more or less the current calendar year but never age, a lot on this site, but today’s Marvin in some ways reverses it. Usually I imagine characters like Hi and Lois’s Trixie frozen in time, aware of their eternal infancy but unable to break out of it. But today we learn that for Jenny, Marvin’s birth wasn’t that long ago, and her pre-motherhood life is still recent enough that she can catch up with an old friend from those days without much oddness or awkwardness. Sure, he’s a terrible baby who brought her to tears, but she’s confident that will pass, as he naturally moves on to other stages of life, learning to speak, read, and, of course, use a toilet. Meanwhile, in real life, I’m the one who’s trapped. I’m the one who’s been making jokes about Marvin shitting himself for nearly thirteen years now. The characters in these strips are just scribbles on paper, and the prison of the comics is a prison for me and me alone.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/14/19

OK, I know that “high concept blindness,” in which the creators of long-running strips in a very specific setting just want to do fairly generic jokes and kind of forget that their characters are all birds or whatever, is a very real thing, but still: I refuse to believe that Hootin’ Holler, an impoverished, isolated town with no apparent governing authority beyond a single sheriff and a single judge, a town where all the buildings are ramshackle, uneven structures clearly built by hand by non-professionals with rooms set off from one another by tattered blankets rather than permanent walls, has a building inspector. Even if such an official were appointed, she would presumably have her time entirely occupied by pleading with residents with children to move out of obvious firetraps, and would have no opportunity to gossip.

Mary Worth, 12/14/19

A legitimate complaint about Zak’s role in Mary Worth is that he’s a sexy but bland wish-fulfillment fantasy, a hot, rich younger man who is extremely solicitous of his older girlfriend but otherwise has no real obvious personality or inner life of his own, and certainly no negative qualities that might make him interesting. Today, though, one of his serious flaws has at last been revealed: he thinks Wilbur Weston, of all people, is “pretty cool.”

Pluggers, 12/14/19

I’d like to think that this plugger is sitting in his truck in the parking lot of the mall, shocked, shocked, that the two fairly specific items he was looking for weren’t available, and thinking about what this world’s come to, where our civilization went wrong. Real heavy stuff! Anyway, you can find doodads pretty easily on the internet these days, you’re welcome pluggers

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Comment of the week? Comment of the week!

“You can tell Mike Nomad is a seasoned pro. He doesn’t need to ask what this armored car driver’s name is, or who he works for, or why he didn’t come forward sooner, or how he has Mike Nomad’s phone number, or why he’s calling him instead of the local authorities. Sure, a mysterious individual called him to bait him and his friend into a murderous trap yesterday, but that was yesterday, man. Pros don’t live in the past.” –jroggs

Hilarious runners up? Hilarious runners up!

“This is so unrealistic! I refuse to believe that someone who has never even seen a lightbulb would have one over his head when he has an idea.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Has anyone gone to a rock concert in a small club over the past few years? I have, and 90% of the audience looks like peers of George and Martha — that is, aged baby boomers out to revisit the classic music of their youth. So, I guess what I’m saying is that the real menace is time, and always was time.” –Where’s Rocky?

“There are very few ways in which a comic strip — a dying art and industry — can produce actual change and help save democracy. A salute Dennis the Menace for finding the perfect way: making fedoras even more uncool.” –Ettorre

“What is up with Vitamin’s face in that first panel. It’s like he’s getting blown by a succubus or heard a joke that is so funny it kills you.” –toxic

“So Alexa drinks her coffee in the car, wears noise-canceling headphones throughout the drive, and waits till she gets to school to work out and shower. If nothing else, this is one teenager who’s really figured out how never to talk to her parents.” –BigTed

“Dagwood opening his eyes wide to consume an improbably high stack of video subscriptions” –ambignostic, on Twitter

“I beg of you not to do this thing. If Garfield gets hold of this lasagna, there’ll never be another decent meal cooked in this kitchen. He’s already got charge of the manicotti. He’s got the stuffed shells. He got the garlic bread! And now he’s after us. Joe, you had one of those Garfield veal parmesan, didn’t you? Well, have you forgotten? Have you forgotten how long you were in the bathroom afterwards? Here, Ed. You know, you remember last year when things weren’t going so well, and you couldn’t make your spaghetti alla puttanesca? You didn’t lose your lunch, did you? Do you think Garfield would have let you keep it? Can’t you understand what’s happening here? Don’t you see what’s happening? Garfield isn’t cooking. Garfield’s eating! Now, we can get through this thing all right. We’ve got to stick together, though. We’ve got to have faith in each other. Otherwise we’ll be the meat in the lasagna!” –Voshkod

“Mr. Nomad, I know a place where you can get top quality turtlenecks cheap. And in every shade you can imagine — rust, bronze, tan, harvest gold, you name it.” –Joe Blevins

“Henry is clearly looking at a drawing by the Dadaist Paul Klee and speaking into the Notes app on his phone. The only thing left in his life that makes him truly happy is working on that art history thesis for the degree that he abandoned when he had to get a more menial job to support his family. Dennis, meanwhile, having grown up in the age of the internet, just sees everything as porn. The menace here is abundant.” –Spunky The Wonder Squid

“Does that dude in the middle panel normally wear that hat, or is he just getting into character for his call. ‘Ok, I’m Sam. I’m an armored car driver, and I collect stamps in my time off. I’m … an only child, and I grew up feeling closer to my mother. Yeah … yeah, I think i’m getting this.’” –pugfuggly

“Well of course the ‘Book Fair’ room is empty — everybody’s down the hall at the ‘Book Terrific!’ room.” –Uncle Lumpy

“It’s not a great book signing when nobody attends your event. Have I got the gist of this week’s installments about right?” –Just John

“Listen, if we’re going to talk about ‘menacing,’ let’s talk about that teacher’s midsection, and what her obvious corset fetish has done to it.” –pastordan

“‘You are fettered,’ said Funky, trembling. ‘Tell me why?’ ‘I wear the red trucker hat I forged in life,’ replied the Ghost. ‘I made it gripe by gripe, and malaprop by malaprop; I refused to take it off of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.’” –Mighty Sean Young

“And that’s how Funky discovered the true meaning of Christmas: inventory management.” –GeoGreg

“‘Spontaneous‘ might apply to abruptly quitting a job you spent years in school preparing for because three weeks of Dennis are more than you can abide. Given that his teacher is never the same person twice, that’s about as menacing as it gets.” –cheech wizard

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