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Slylock Fox, 8/19/24

Slylock is not alarmed because he knows about the square cube law, which dictates that this unnaturally enlarged mosquito’s body will not be able to support his own weight and he will soon die as his respiratory and circulatory systems collapse. We can only pray that Weirdly’s mechanical tinkering with the bug’s brain wiped away his conscious mind so that he doesn’t have to experience the excruciating process.

Mary Worth, 8/19/24

Remember Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus? Well, get ready for the upcoming Ed-Estelle wedding plotline, Veterinarians Think About Sad Dogs Who Want More Pills All Day, While Unpaid Veterinarian Assistants Spiral Into Bridezilla Mania And Possibly Set The Stage For Actual Fightfights At Their Weddings. I’m tentatively into it!

Gasoline Alley, 8/19/24

Sure, you might say that blogging about comics is “pretty easy all things considered” and “not a real job,” but have you considered the untold psychic damage I take every day, for your amusement, as any number of insane comics details burrow permanently into my brain? For instance, years from now, when my mind has turned to soup and I have forgotten the name and face of everyone I ever loved, I guarantee that if you visit me in whatever facility I’m warehoused in and whisper “Chief Meowrice” into my ear, the correct neuron sequence will fire and my mind’s eye will be presented with the image of this horrible French cat advertising pitchman. If I’m lucky, the experience will kill me.

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The Phantom, 8/18/24

A fun running bit in The Phantom is that we sometimes see original Phantom creator Lee Falk going about his day in pre-war Manhattan, musing about whatever direction the Phantom storyline is going to go in next. This can cause minor issues when it comes to suspension of disbelief, since the Phantom clearly takes place in the 21st century; I buy that Falk could’ve dreamed up plutocrats with their own private rocket companies, though independent post-colonial African states seems a bit more of a stretch. However, I have a harder time believing that our comics scribe neither keeps copies of his own strips nor subscribes to the newspapers that print them and needs help remembering plot points from a few days ago. I guess we really lost something when we replaced friendly one-man newspaper stand businesses with the Internet, although the Internet would also be happy to show Lee Falk last week’s strip, if he asked.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 8/18/24

This is in fact a repeat of a mystery that ran back in June of 2022. However, it’s been redrawn and recolored and — crucially, to establish the much worse vibes — has had dialogue added to show that Slylock has decied to dispense with even the flimsy pretense of rule of law that Forest Kingdom cops operate under and is about to dish out a brutal extrajudicial beating on his shrew nemesis.

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Bizarro, 8/17/24

Hey, have you heard of the concept of “burial at sea?” Well, get this, what if there’s a sort of cool party guy — you know, the kind who wears Hawaiian shirts on the regular — who spends a lot of time in hot tubs, and so he requests a “burial at jacuzzi?” Would be pretty funny, right? Not clear if he means his private home jacuzzi, or the one in his condo complex, or just some random jacuzzi in a hotel or gym somewhere, but it would a pretty funny concept if you dumped this guy’s corpse into it, and it slowly bloated and rotted there, and some poor soul stumbled upon it days later, discovering a jacuzzi that has now been turned into an awful soup full of human guts … wait, no, did I say funny? I meant horrible! It would be horrible! Did we already do a cartoon about this, based on the premise from earlier in the paragraph, when it seemed more innocent and carefree? We did? And you’re saying it’s published in newspapers for God and everyone to see? Ah shit ah shit!

Mary Worth, 8/17/24

Oh yeah, also Dr. Ed proposed to Estelle or whatever, which I haven’t bothered talking about because it’s just been two solid weeks of talking about how much they love each other without any hint of upcoming dramatic conflict of any kind. Today, we finally get a glimpse at what an actual story might hold: is it possible that Ed and Estelle are going to be spending too much time together? She already works for him (without pay!) so maybe the scam-prone Estelle is being pulled into a little two-person cult from which she won’t be able to escape. Remember, the court can’t force a wife to testify against her husband for various animal-related crimes, the way it could force a nephew to testify against his uncle!