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The Phantom, 2/7/19

So I was roundly and correctly roasted last week for not being up on the Phantom lore and realizing that it’s Heloise who has a Great-Uncle Dave (a terrorism expert, natch), not Kadia. I may not know much about ancillary Phantom characters, but I do know about international diplomacy, enough to realize that giving teenagers cabinet positions and admiralships in order to spirit them out of the country and avoid talking to the police is pretty dodgy, and I also know enough about storytelling to know that it’s kind of weird to spend this much post-climax strip time talking about the mechanics of how President Luaga is spiriting Heloise and Kadia out of the country. Really, it’s only interesting to nerds who are curious about the details of Bangalla’s governance and external relations — and I cannot emphasize enough that I am very much one of those nerds. Why do you think President Luaga is doing this himself? Are these sorts of appointments exclusively made by the president in person, according to the Bangallan constitution? Or is Luaga just here on a lark because he’s kind of bored with the day to day of Bangallan governance, which, for the record, I as a nerd am also eager to learn more about?

Mary Worth, 2/7/19

I’m pretty sure that Mary Worth is the person that Toby spends the most time with, which is profoundly sad, for both of them really, but it’s clear here that at least it means she’s building up an immunity to Mary’s platitudes and has gotten to the point where she can now just ignore them altogether. “Don’t worry about how you appear. Just talk to him.” “When I do, the most important thing will be how I appear!” I’m not sure how long Mary will accept this state of affairs before she takes her meddling to the next level (hypnosis, binding court orders, etc.).

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/19

You ever see one of those sentences that has been run through some kind of automatic translator and while grammatically correct makes no sense? In unrelated news, here’s today’s Rex Morgan, M.D.!

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Mark Trail, 2/6/19

Welp, all the parts of this Mark Trail storyline that involve children in peril have been resolved to everybody’s satisfaction, so we’re getting to the much more harrowing part of the plot: when Mark and Cherry earnestly discuss whether or not Rusty has developed sex feelings. “Sex feelings can be very intense, especially if they’re not reciprocated!” says Cherry, who’s been lounging in a bikini for days next to Mark, who hasn’t so much as looked at her. “I’ve never experienced a sex feeling and have no plans to in the future, so I don’t see why Rusty would!” says Mark, who’s also clearly never read a comic book, either.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/6/19

Ha ha, it’s funny because Bull’s TBI-induced dementia means that he can’t even enjoy his honors and achievements, because they only trigger nagging reminders of half-remembered wrongdoings and send him into a panic!

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Crankshaft, 2/5/19

The sad thing is that this doctor probably spent a lot of time thinking up this zinger, but never said it out loud to anyone to make sure it actually made sense outside his head. “Get it, because you’re … going to make the person you’re calling pay … when you die? Or wait, maybe you’re the one getting the call in this scenario. Look, just eat less cheese, OK? Cut … cut back on the cheese, is what I’m saying.”

Six Chix, 2/5/19

There’s definitely an angle at which a wine bottle is held to the lips where it goes from “a jaunty swig” to “guzzling as part of some terrible emotional crisis,” and we seem well past it in this strip, to the extent that I’m very worried that that huge knife is so close at hand.

Gil Thorp, 2/5/19

God, Gil is so thrilled in panel three, it’s unseemly. “I knew it!” he thinks. “I knew this little twerp was suicidal! See, I can so connect with these losers emotionally. In your face, haters!”