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Spider-Man, 10/30/18

The whole thing about Spider-Man is that, as a character, he’s supposed to be not some untouchable superhuman, but an ordinary guy with some extraordinary ability and also a lot of foibles — relatable, in other words. And sometimes it works! Like, in panel one, I definitely relate to chatting with someone that you’re trying to make friends with and then you accidentally blurt out some phrase like “you’ve got a lot on the ball!”, which is sort of like idiomatic English but in fact very much isn’t a thing anyone actually says. I’d be kicking myself over it for it for weeks, though; Spidey, on the other hand, thinks this is going great and is ready to confidently progress to the makeouts, which I don’t relate to at all.

Hagar the Horrible, 10/30/18

Ha ha, even after breaking up with an obvious creep, this woman can never escape him, because he’s managed to worm his way into her very mind and take away her ability to control her own body! Ahh, the funny pages, a pleasant place for innocent laffs that don’t as a rule center on nightmarish body horror.

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Dick Tracy, 10/29/18

I did a small amount of Googling to try to figure out what “the old ‘neighborhood bank’ plan” was and came up empty, but I assume it was the sort of thing that wasn’t uncommon in the early 20th century, where local, unregulated financial institutions flourished and you could never be entirely sure if you were dealing with a grey-market bank or a ponzi scheme. But today’s Dick Tracy makes it clear how you could ensure your money was safe: just get your lawyer involved and then these undeground, gangster-run pseudo-banks would have to hold onto your money for decades and hand it over to your duly appointed heirs, decades later!

Crankshaft, 10/29/18

You know, when I was a kid riding a yellow bus to school, we had both a driver and a “bus aide” whose job was to keep us from killing each other so the driver could focus on not killing us in a terrible accident. Is that even a thing anymore? Was it ever a thing in most places? Anyway, Crankshaft has never had any assistance on his bus, and he makes do by just literally not giving a shit about what the kids do, not even bothering to look at them or spend any time thinking about them, really.

Pluggers, 10/29/18

Pluggers seems like they’re doing OK at first, but when you talk to them for more than a few minutes, the extent of their cognitive decline becomes obvious.

Crock, 10/29/18

Ha ha! It’s funny because the lady cactus doesn’t want to fuck!

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Ahh, Sunday Mark Trail nature facts, what do you have for me this week?

Mark Trail panel 1, 10/28/18

“Very few!” That certainly sounds extremely reassuring.

Mark Trail panel 2, 10/28/18

Wait, WHAT. What the fuck. Holy shit. Savage. Child-sized. SQUAMATES????

Mark Trail, 10/28/18

WAIT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BE AFRAID OF THESE HIGHLY INTELLIGENT LIZARDS OR NOT. ARE THEY FRIEND OR FOE. ARE THEY ONE OF THE VERY FEW KINDS OF LIZARD THAT POSE A THREAT TO HUMANS OR ARE THEY JUST A DANGER TO, LIKE, THE ECOSYSTEM OR WHATEVER BUT THEY’RE NOT ACTUALLY GONNA EAT US. LIKE I KNOW WE’RE PART OF THE ECOSYSTEM, ULTIMATELY, BUT LIKE ARE YOU USING “ECOSYSTEM” IN THAT REALLY INCLUSIVE SENSE HERE. PLEASE MARK I DEPEND ON YOU TO LET ME KNOW HOW MUCH I SHOULD PANIC

Shoe, 10/28/18

You know, I spend a lot of time on this blog musing about how the animals took over in Slylock Fox but next to none on the background of the bird-world of Shoe. And while I believe that the animal regime in Slylock was established by a sudden and violent revolution, I think that the Shoe bird-folk evolved to fill the niche left open after humanity went extinct on its own. The bird-men’s paleontological sciences are apparently underdeveloped, and they believe that many of the landscape modifications we left behind — the golf courses, for instance — are simply natural features of the landscape; the more religious among them see them as proof of a loving Bird-God who wants them to be happy, or, in this case, mildly frustrated.