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Judge Parker, 9/16/19

OK, let me let you in on some “Hollywood insider” information: I’m afraid that spending three days telling a couple of unrepped aspiring screenwriters your convoluted life story of spying and betrayal does not mean that the movie that’s going to exonerate you will be opening nationwide in time for awards season. I’m not sure how often along the long, winding path to production April’s gonna need to blow back into town to threaten someone with a gun: when our gals try to get an agent? At meetings with Netflix execs who see it more as a series? When they get the first round of producer notes telling them the protagonist needs to be more likable? This could be a lot more work than she’s bargained for, and she might want to look into getting an apartment in LA.

Six Chix, 9/16/19

I honestly appreciate to work put into actually making the grawlixes look like real physical objects, but to me it has the downside of trying to read them as a rebus and figure out what the swear word is supposed to be. “Screw poop”? “Screwy shit”? “Screw turd”? I feel like I’m so close, but not quite there.

Hi and Lois, 9/16/19

Hell yeah, Trixie feels good about how she looks and does not feel constrained by the gender binary. You go, kiddo!

Shoe, 9/16/19

It took me a few seconds to see the flowerpot that Biz is holding in panel two here, and so I parsed “bouquet” in the sense of “odor” or “smell” and assumed that the poor old man had the literal small of death on him. Like, just the odor of an embalmed corpse that he couldn’t get out of his nose. Anyway, let’s all have a fun week, everyone!

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Mary Worth, 9/15/19

Reading this strip, I suddenly had an intrusive memory of one of the all-time great Dawn Romance Fail plots. In the aftermath of her near death at sea, Dawn was on the lookout for a more meaningful life, and Mary had just the thing: doing volunteer work down at the hospital! Dawn immediately met Jim, a nice young man with one arm who lost his arm and his sister (who looked exactly like Dawn) in the same tragic boat accident, which meant that Jim had to prevent Dawn from getting near any bodies of water at all costs! He also wanted Dawn to have sex with him, and got angry and abusive when she turned him down, but Dawn’s extremely competent psychology professor taught her that it’s very important for women to break down the emotional barriers between themselves and the men who want to fuck/yell at them, so she managed to convince Jim to ease up and just be friends. And, having truly achieved her goal of living a more meaningful life, she never had to hang out with Jim again, but it sure took a while to get there! That’s why it’s great that this noble burn victim has managed to pass in and out of Dawn’s life in only a few moments, giving her a tissue … and a reason to live, and love again … without hanging around or making her pretend to like him or anything like that. He’s got his own rich, fulfilling life going on somewhere else! Probably! I mean, we’ll never know, but let’s just assume.

Hagar the Horrible, 9/15/19

I’m often fascinated by the way the top row of throwaway panels in a Sunday strip, which aren’t printed in many papers, can change the whole tenor of the piece. Like, if you didn’t have them today, this would just be the story of Lucky Eddie being late to dinner with Hagar for some unknown reason. But with them, it’s the story of Lucky being late for some unknown reason and made even later by a couple of comical farmer types who blocked the whole road! Really makes you think, doesn’t it?

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Mark Trail, 9/14/19

“Shh, Cherry, shhh, everything will be OK … I promise you,” Mark said, gently but firmly removing the Cherry-unit’s head so her system would deactivate and he could safely store her. “No need to worry her,” he thought. “I’ll just reassemble her when I get back from Nepal and she’ll never even realize I was gone.”

Dustin, 9/14/19

Hot tip for dude cartoonists: if you ever have the urge to do a strip about how “ha ha, women sure sometimes just SLATHER ON THE MAKEUP, amiright”, just be sure your lady characters are the ones doing the talking! Then it’ll all be on the up and up. We all know how catty women are, right? Mrr-ow!

The Phantom, 9/14/19

Hey, if you’ve been reading The Phantom for a while and you ever wondered “Hmm, would someone raised from birth to be a gun-toting warrior who goes on to suffer incredible physical and psychological trauma on mission after mission end up with, like, PTSD, maybe,” today’s dream sequence has some answers for you!