Post Content

Dick Tracy, 4/3/19

Well I for one am excited that this current Dick Tracy storyline, about a journalist who’s also a serial killer, seems to be entirely focused on the journalist-serial killer’s dissatisfaction with the nickname he’s had foisted onto him. He apparently would prefer to be known as “The Professor” because he “teaches the teachers,” which, not to sound like an elitist or anything, implies that he wholly misunderstands the distinction between secondary and tertiary education. Also, since I guess I’m going to sound like an elitist no matter what, it’s a little less impressive to “teach the teachers” when the teachers you teach are all gym teachers.

Gil Thorp, 4/3/19

Ahh, finally we’re learning what the “family stuff” was that kids were missing precious softball scrimmages for: doing “stuff” at a convention with your “family” of fellow content producers in the pop culture industrial complex. It looks like our spring Gil Thorp storyline is going to answer that age-old question: can a jock also be … a nerd?

Mark Trail, 4/3/19

Whoa, check out the quick swivel Mark’s got going on in the first panel here. “I’m sorry, is someone other than me needlessly reassuring a woman who’s talking about outdoorsy stuff that she hasn’t made an embarrassing error? And does that other person have the hint of a beard? I sense trouble brewing!”

Beetle Bailey, 4/3/19

As the U.S. military crumbles and the homeland itself is subject to enemy invasion, we’re down to our last line of defense: the troops garrisoned at Camp Swampy. With artillery raining down on the command post, things are not looking good.

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 4/2/19

The current Gil Thorp plot is so dull that even I, a noted Gil Thorp obsessive, can’t come up with much to say about it, but I do want to point out some weird art business here, specifically regarding soft-spoken Nancy Kaffer, and specifically regarding soft-spoken Nancy Kaffer’s ears. Like, isn’t kind of odd that her entire, fully formed ears are totally visible and protruding through her otherwise unbroken waterfall of straight hair? As our point of view in each panel gets further away from her, we’re still reminded that yes, her ears really do stick right through her hair like that, we weren’t just seeing it at a very specific angle or anything. It reminds me of when the managing editor at my college newspaper worried that his headshot in his column looked off because you couldn’t see one of his ears in it, so he used Photoshop to copy his visible ear, flip it around, and paste it to the other side of his head, which is to say it looks very bad.

Mark Trail, 4/2/19

Welp, it looks like Doc and Mark are off on an adventure to find Doc’s lost gold mine, which, I don’t think I mentioned yet, is out in the Sonoran Desert somewhere in southern Arizona, and that facial expression in panel three is definitely one of a man who’s having some second thoughts! You know, thoughts like, “Wow, I’m an old man and we’re about to go spend hours in unforgiving 100+ degree heat. We should get, like … a bottle of water, I guess? Maybe some hats? Am I gonna die out there? I don’t want to die out there, guys.”

Mary Worth, 4/2/19

Mary has been the master of delicately throwing shade for years, of course. Who could forget the time Tommy was smoking weed in his mother’s apartment and Mary made a casual but completely brutal reference to “whatever Tommy’s smoking” while serving Iris tea? Today she manages to pack even more contempt, mingled with disappointment and disbelief, in an ellipsis: “Money from … you?” Estelle should be more devastated by this than by the fact that she just got grifted out of ten grand.

The Lockhorns, 4/2/19

I really want the background to this little episode here, and I don’t mean “one of the Lockhorns gag writers, while standing in the shower, thought ‘Hah, what if the shower hurt, that’d be a real meteor shower, right? Does it hurt when you have hard water? I don’t know what hard water is, exactly.’” No, I’m talking about what led up to this moment within the universe of the panel. Clearly Leroy started yelling or something to get Loretta to come in. Maybe she heard his shouts of pain and thought he was finally having the heart attack that would free her from her hellish existence! But no, he’s just sticking his head out of the shower, heavy-lidded as ever, and delivering this line. Also, they’re clearly at home, given that Leroy and Loretta never seem to go on vacation, and that the decor here is very much in keeping with what I assume is their post-war Long Island suburban milieu, so it doesn’t really make much sense that he’d suddenly have something to say about the water quality now. Basically it seems like he’s put in a lot of effort into making a baffling point that’s only left everyone irritated, which is kind of the Lockhorn marriage in a nutshell when you think about it.

Marvin, 4/2/19

Even casual readers of Marvin know that the parents of the titular hell-baby don’t particularly like their son very much, for obvious reasons. But you really have to get into the everyday rhythm of the strip to appreciate how much they hate each other as well.

Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 4/1/19

There were a bunch of comics today whose “punchlines” involved characters playing April Fools Day pranklets on each other, and it really affirmed my cranky opinions that (a) April Fools Day is dumb and (b) there are few things less funny in a comic strip than characters doing things that are supposed to be funny within the universe of the comic strip. Still, I kind of enjoyed today’s Dennis the Menace, because in the first panel, we can see that Mr. Wilson’s curmudgeonly demeanor around Dennis is no act. He harbors no secret affection for the lad who’s apparently in his house virtually every day. Nobody’s looking at him here; his face is turned away from Martha, so there’s nobody he’s putting on a performance for. He’s genuinely ecstatic that the little boy who’s made a mockery of the peaceful retirement he spent a lifetime saving for is leaving, and when he finds out that’s a lie — a lie all the more cruel because it comes from his wife, the woman who knows more than anyone how much he wants it to be true — he’s utterly crushed. APRIL FOOLS!!!!!! :) :) :)

Funky Winkerbean, 4/1/19

Funky Winkerbean, to its credit, constantly does the bit where one character tells a joke that utterly fails to land and then has to explain or justify it, and that explanation is somehow supposed to be the “punchline” of the comic. This strip doesn’t need April Fools Day as an opportunity demonstrate that the whole process of trying to make other people laugh is a frustrating and ultimately fruitless endeavor.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/1/19

I love how completely gobsmacked Sarah looks in the final panel here. “You mean … there are adults who react to events with normal human emotions, rather than just suffocating everything with a comforting blanket of smug superiority? Unheard of!”