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Crock, 7/25/19

I’m not usually a “this political cartoon needs more labels” guy, but today’s Crock — which is not, strictly speaking, a political cartoon, but nevertheless is rich in political content — needs some more explanation of what the hell its point is, because folks: there’s a lot going on here. It’d be one thing if the implication was that the Kids Today have turned away from baseball cards (or, more generically “sport trading cards”) and instead turned to CEO cards; it could be some ambiguous statement about changing priorities, or the entrepreneurial nature of the kids today. But the reference to the “crime stats” really puts a whole different spin on it. Is Maggot’s side-eye a criticism of our lawless culture’s affect on children, where predatory business practices are lionized and the youth fall under the sway of win-at-any-cost business leaders? Or is the children’s card game meant to be a critique of capitalism, and Maggot’s discomfort is with this obvious socialist propaganda dissuading the youth from respecting those who’ve worked hard to create jobs? And why is there a vulture involved? I mean, I know the larger sense there’s a vulture character in Crock, but is he meant to be symbolic here? Does he represent venture (“vulture”) capital funds, which buy up unprofitable companies and strip them for parts? Does he represent Marxist “revolutionaries” hoping to gorge on the wealth created by productive capitalists? WHY? WHY AM I THINKING ABOUT THIS SO MUCH? WHY??????

Six Chix, 7/25/19

Now here’s a strip that doesn’t need any explanation! Just a mom cockroach and her adorable little kid cockroach, and they love each other! Nothing weird or unpleasant or confusing about that!

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Pluggers, 7/24/19

If I were to make a joke about exurban American old people obsessively watching Matlock, it would be rude, but since Pluggers is a feature by and for exurban American old people, they can say it, and I respect that. Anyway, my guess is that what the dog-man plugger is attempting to convey is less “I use the syndicated rebroadcasts of classic TV shows in the pre-local-news programming block to tell the time, just as my ancestors used the position of the sun and the stars” and more “woman, please hold your tongue and do not interrupt me during my favorite stories, it makes it hard to focus and solve the mystery, we discussed this.”

Mark Trail, 7/24/19

I always knew Mark Trail was in the tank for the Fourth Estate, but who knew that the payoff of this story would be that good local journalism was the real treasure all along — more valuable than gold?

Mary Worth, 7/24/19

Dawn has spent most of this date using factoids from the “Trivia” section of Wikipedia articles she got to from clicking names in the “List of French people” at random as conversational prompts, and somehow it’s still going better than the last one did.

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Six Chix, 7/23/19

Look, folks: I make fun of Six Chix quite a bit here, but the truth is, not everything is for everyone, you know? These strips aren’t really written with me in mind, and that’s OK! They’re for people who are maybe a little older, who maybe have little less “edgy” sensibility than I do. Suburban moms who just want to open the paper and laugh at life’s little foibles, to see a joke then can relate to. Who among us hasn’t run into a few problems with short-term memory as they age, right? Who among us hasn’t had long stretches of the day that they can’t remember, that they can’t account for, but feel a gnawing sense that something horrible happened in those missing hours? Haven’t we all had “one of those days,” where you come to, not sure whether it’s “wine o’clock” or even what day or time of year it is, covered in blood, so much blood, you’d think there’d be a body here with all this blood, but it’s nowhere to be found? Maybe the body’s in the closet. Is there more blood around the closet? It’s so hard to tell. The blood is everywhere.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/23/19

You might think it cruel that Snuffy is laughing at his nephew for trying and failing spectacularly to bake himself a tasty dessert. In fact, he’s laughing that anyone — especially anyone who lives with him — would assume he owns anything as useful and potentially economically productive as a hammer and chisel.

Sam and Silo, 7/23/19

Wow, I have to admit that I haven’t been keeping up with the latest currents in Roman Catholic theology, but I’m pretty surprised they’ve gone from Vatican II to “humanity is an infestation of vermin too powerful for even God to kill” in less than sixty years.