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Six Chix, 5/2/19

Hey guys, remember the Smurfs? I do! Sort of! In the sense that I know I watched the show obsessively as a kid and was super into it but honestly couldn’t really recount the plot of a single episode, but I do distinctly remember that Gargamel, the show’s primary antagonist, wants to eat the Smurfs, which I found fairly shocking as a child but honestly Gargamel was a pretty incompetent villain so he never got particularly close to achieving this goal. But these random children sure have, as part of their campfire fun! I’m not sure if that smurf in the s’murf the orange-shirted lad is proudly holding is already dead and nobody’s had the decency to close his eyes, or if he’s alive and trapped between the graham crackers, his screams muffled by the marshmallow goo holding him in place. And what about the guy just sitting there at the lower right, looking stunned? Is he drugged? Is he too frozen in terror to flee? Did he betray his friend, thinking, incorrectly, that the children would let him live? This is without question the most horrifying thing Six Chix has ever presented us with, and this is a strip that once did a joke about having sex with bigfoot.

Mary Worth, 5/2/19

Oh my goodness, “Arthur” has a dog! This changes everything. Maybe Arthur isn’t a bad man, he just needed money for his dog’s expensive operation! That fancy hotel he was staying at was just the equivalent of a Ronald McDonald House for people who need to come in from out of town to go to a high-end vet!

OK, fine, we all know this isn’t true and that Arthur is a bad man, and the way we know is by his dog’s expression of profound ennui. He’s heard all this before, man, and too many times. Sure, it pays for the kibble, but at what spiritual cost?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/2/19

I was going to make a joke along the lines of “Ha ha, Snuffy’s being left alone in his cell to starve to death!” but honestly, look at how rickety that jail is. The door Sheriff Tait is walking out of isn’t even on a hinge! He’s just kind of moving it out of the way! I’m reasonably sure Snuffy will be out chicken thievin’ again before you know it.

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/19

Hey, remember last year in Crankshaft when a poor little girl was buying a book on “layaway,” a few pennies at a time, from Lilian’s unlicensed bookstore, so Crankshaft bought it for her, but she turned out to be a little grifter running a scam? I guess “people will respond to basic acts of human decency by attempting to profit off your kindness” is a Funkyverse thing now, which has a different kind of depressing valence than “the universe will snuff out your happiness with arbitrary tragedy.” Not sure where the obvious anger simmering under today’s strip is coming from, unless it’s based on the belief that there’s some kind of lucrative secondary market for signed Funky Winkerbean art, which I can assure you there is not.

Dick Tracy, 5/1/19

Ugh, the whole point of Minit Mysteries is that there supposed to be quick and simple and not … full of just endless text about small town administrative terminology and the minutia of the local criminal syndicate’s org chart. I’m not going to read this, you hear me? I’m not. I’m getting older, I only have a limited amount of brain space anymore, and I need to focus it on what brings me joy.

Gil Thorp, 5/1/19

See, I accidentally learned that the town in Dick Tracy has a “president” instead of a mayor and it made me forget the name of the the reporter who isn’t adversarial towards the Thorps and all they stand for. I want to say it’s … Marcie? Is that right? Anyway, I mostly am here to point out that Marty Moon would never let Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp go off the record to say “Yeah, I’m definitely surprised this team isn’t doing as badly as I 100% expected them to do.” Of course, she also went off the record to say “There’s a swagger and spirit to this team that’s infectious,” which is like a perfect coach sound bite, so really Mimi’s whole media relations strategy is pretty muddled.

The Phantom, 5/1/19

The Phantom is not exactly known for its verisimilitude, but I do absolutely believe that the shadowy guerilla warriors guarding terrorist compounds deep in the African desert spend more time than you’d think dicking around on their phones.

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Spider-Man, 4/30/19

I know I said I wasn’t going to get into Rerun Newspaper Spider-Man until it dipped a little further into the vaults than five years ago, but I guess I should grudgingly acknowledge that the particular rerun storyline they chose to launch the reruns involves Mysterio as a villain, who will also be the villain in this summer’s upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home, which means that this zombified strip is doing a significantly better job of adding the infinitesimal amount of buzz of which it’s capable into the cultural ether to boost the next entry in the most lucrative series of films in cinematic history than it did when it was still a going concern.

Anyway, not that I expect to revisit this, but the outcome of this newspaper storyline was that this Mysterio wasn’t the real Mysterio, despite the fact that as far as I’m concerned anyone who puts on this ludicrously dumb costume with its fishbowl helmet and calls themselves Mysterio deserves to be thought of as a real Mysterio, at least. I would find it profoundly amusing and satisfying if this were also the shocking twist at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, a film where presumably 75% of those seeing it will have only the vaguest of familiarity with the character. The main result would be a collective “Huh?” from most of the audience, followed by some furious rewriting of the infinite “Who Is Mysterio, The Villain Of Spider-Man: Far From Home?” explainer articles churned out by every publication from Politico to Bon Appétit as they desperately seek out that sweet, sweet Marvel Cinematic Universe SEO traffic.

Mark Trail, 4/30/19

Mark has been scowling aggressively at JJ pretty much from the moment he met him, and he’s gotten so deep into it that he seems to have forgotten his real primary non-punching role, which is to interject nature facts at vaguely appropriate times. Looks like Doc has to do his work for him! And he’s not doing a great job! Javelinas aren’t pigs, but they’re part of the suborder Suina, which means they’re more closely related to pigs than any animal that isn’t a pig. You’re lucky you’re so far out in the desert that nobody can look this up on their phone, Doc!

Dennis the Menace, 4/30/19

I’m not up on modern methods of child discipline, but usually when a kid’s in “time out” or whatever they call it these days, do his parents let his friends just wander in and talk with him? I mean, maybe the other kids’ parents want them to see him, like as a cautionary example or something.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/30/19

Hmm … Lucky Eddie wants to open a fish store because he’s … “passionate” … about … fish?

Hagar the Horrible, 7/17/18 and 8/26/17

Noooooooooooooo