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Alice, 4/15/24

I’m happy to report that, sine I started reading Alice a few weeks ago, I have fallen thoroughly, 100% under its spell. This strip takes perfectly ordinary situations, like when you receive parrot medicine from beloved novelist and short story writer Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) but are then unable to give it to your parrot because it flies away, and turns them into delightfully surreal episodes. Ha ha, that parrot does not want to take that medicine! Also Alice (?) is … flying? And her head …. looks like that? Anyway! Alice, I don’t fully “get it” but I’m keenly interested to see what it’s doing next!

Crock, 4/15/24

Look, man, I get what you’re going for here and it’s basically cute and whimsical, but maybe don’t have your characters stumble upon a field of hacked-off human extremities rotting in the desert sun if your comic set is against the backdrop of grinding colonial insurgency, OK? Just … trust me on this one.

The Phantom, 4/15/24

So this current Phantom storyline, it turns out, is about Kit Jr. joining the Ghost Who Walks on one of his adventures, so we can all find out if he really has it what it takes to step up, become the 22nd Phantom, the ultimate jungle warrior and seemingly immortal crime fighter, and fulfill the destiny he was born and bred for. Anyway, turns out he definitely does not have what it takes! He’s just going to get strangled with a chain by some low-level henchman wearing a tank top, because he wasn’t paying attention, like a dumbass.

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Mary Worth, 4/14/24

Are you feeling down, my friends? Depressed? Abandoned? Do you worry that nobody loves you, simply because, in many ways both large and small, you have with your own actions made yourself unloveable? Well, just think about this: maybe someday you’ll rudely bump into a child because you’re deep in your own internal pity party and not watching where you’re walking, and in doing so save that child’s life. Wow! Really makes you think! Or, it would make you think if you even notice that it happens, which you won’t, because you are, and I can’t emphasize this enough, incredibly self-absorbed.

Judge Parker, 4/14/24

Look, I wish no ill upon Judge Parker. I hope it continues to grace the funny pages, both physical and virtual, for years to come. But I will say that, if any comic strip, soap opera or otherwise, decided to wrap things up, there are a lot worse ways to write the final chapter than a rogue CIA agent preparing all the other characters for a murder-suicide pact.

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Hi and Lois, 4/13/24

Two things you have to keep in mind when reading today’s Hi and Lois: (a) despite my many jokes about how Trixie is an eternal baby who’s been an infant for 70 years now, we have to understand that, in the world of the strip, she’s actually less than a year old, and (b) the Flagston family dog is named Dawg. Which means that at some point, possibly quite recently, these kids decided to name their baseball team after the dog, but now that there’s something new and exciting on the scene in terms of cute nonverbal family members, they’re willing to just throw out their old name and take on a new one. It makes me sick and I’m just glad Dawg’s not here to see it.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/13/24

Children have long been expected to contribute economically to their households at a pretty young age, particularly in poorer, developing societies. The real unnerving thing here is not that Jughaid’s trying to help pay his way, but the question of where, in a town whose economy is entirely based on criminality, he got the money.

Daddy Daze, 4/13/24

OK, fine, I laughed at this. See, the joke is that the Daddy Daze baby isn’t potty trained, so he doesn’t really see the point of the toilet. He can just poop whenever and wherever he wants, he doesn’t need a special piece of furniture for it! If Marvin tried to pull this off, I’d be furious, but Daddy Daze doesn’t go to the poop joke well too often so I’ll allow it.