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Comment of the Week

Is Dr. Jeff's 'again’ meant to indicate that he's already (willfully?) forgotten what Mary's told him, or does it display his belief that Wilbur's life is a karmic circle of disasters that are superficially varied but basically the same thing happening to him over and over?

—Pozzo
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Kevin’s gonna go to his house and taunt him with his home run record and ten whole fingers

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Gil Thorp, 6/12/18

If there’s one thing Gil Thorp is committed to, it’s the lore, so yeah, I guarantee there was a Gil Thorp plot years back about a star baseball prospect who accidentally lost a finger or three to a grain thresher, and I’m devastated that I missed it. Mostly what I love here is how completely Kevin Pelwecki, a delusional quarterback wannabe who, thanks to obsessively watching YouTube videos, has turned out to be Actually Good at baseball, takes this information in stride. A baseball player with a mutilated hand? A football player who accidentally cut off his leg with a chainsaw? It’s all par for the course around the Milford athletic department!

Six Chix, 6/12/18

So, imagine you have a dog holding other dogs at gunpoint yelling “DROP THE BONES!” Would it be funny? No, not at all. Would you at least be able to parse what’s happening? Yes, for the most part. Now, imagine that the “gun” is drawn so that it might not be a gun, but it still looks kind of like one, and the gun(?)-weilding dog also makes a reference to an “app” of some sort. Would you be able to parse that? Not anymore! But would it be funny now? Not really! Anyway, you don’t have to imagine all this, because it just got printed across America, in several newspapers!

Shoe, 6/12/18

The Tip O’Neil-esque bird-senator in Shoe is named Batson Belfrey (it’s wordplay, get it????) and I guess the bat logo on the front of his podium is part of a personal branding effort. I’d like to imagine that today’s somewhat labored punchline is a result of a new Shoe intern being told to write dialogue for a pre-drawn strip without really being given any background, and they saw the bat and thought, “Well, is he … goth? I guess he’s a goth senator? And goths like the Addams Family, right?”

Hi and Lois, 6/12/18

The two garbage men looked at each other in mounting horror. Irma had worn them down over the period of months, with both carrots and sticks they wouldn’t talk about, even to each other, until they said they’d take her husband’s body to the dump. But when the agreed day arrived, it wasn’t what they had signed up for at all. He was still alive. But they were in too deep now. They had no choice.

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I really thought the solution was going to involve a paper airplane

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Slylock Fox, 6/11/18

Today’s Slylock has what strikes me as a pretty big disconnect between the text and the art. The narrative we’re presented with asks us to believe that it’s Max who was lagging behind, and Slylock who has to still forge ahead to complete their mission. But check out what they actually look like: Max dynamically striding forward into adventure, looking over his shoulder at his companion, who’s desperately clinging to the broken bridge with a look of panic on his face. It’s almost as if these tales aren’t being written by their true hero, isn’t it? Anyway, here’s hoping Max crumples that map into a ball, tosses it into the ravine while Slylock watches, and heads off into the jungle, never looking back.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/11/18

While I admit it isn’t for everyone, I really enjoyed the Darren Aronofsky Noah from a few years back (my pocket review is that the it’s the only big-budget biblical epic I’ve seen that has the nerve to get as crazy as the actual bible). One of the key themes of the movie is that for most of the story Noah believes that God plans to kill off all of mankind for its sins; Noah and his family are merely to shepherd the animal species through the Flood, and then once they die of old age, the human race will be justly wiped out. It’s only when he discovers that his daughter-in-law is pregnant that he has to recalibrate his thinking; but what today’s Barney Google and Snuffy Smith asks us to imagine is a word where the Flood is meant as a final and complete act of extermination, not just for man but for the beasts as well. Parson Tuttle is, as usual, wrong: There is an ark, and these creatures are calmly walking one by one into it, each to bear witnes for his or her kind at the complete elimination of all their fellows. All will live out the rest of their lives in contemplation, and eventually perish, leaving the earth cleansed of the filth that is biological life.

Mary Worth, 6/11/18

Hey, remember when Tommy used to date one his co-workers, but then he hurt himself and missed a few days of work, and when he came back she dumped him and he became a Vicodin addict? Then he eventually got fired, which solved the problem of having to work with an ex, but caused more problems in terms of not having a job and spiraling downward into addiction and so forth. But good news! Now he has a job, and there’s a girl at this job that Tommy clearly intends to make his own! His life’s all set, until the dangerous combination of a back injury and a breakup inevitably befalls him again.

Spider-Man, 6/11/18

It’s funny because Iron Fist has immediately taken Spidey’s measure and deemed him not even worth punching with his titular iron fist, and instead has chosen to kick him with what I assume is a regular, non-metallic foot, which appears to be clad in a ballet slipper of some kind.

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Is “Professor Incisor” related to Sawtooth, or … you know what, I’m not gonna bother thinking about this

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Dick Tracy, 6/10/18

Ha ha, I guess this is why they call him “Sawtooth”: if you try to make small talk with him during the 46-hour train ride from California to Chicago, he’ll bite your head off! Metaphorically. And maybe literally, later. 46 hours is a long time. And that’s the scheduled travel time. Those long-haul Amtrak routes often run very late. Lotta opportunities for, say, a guy with metal teeth to bite another guy’s head off, is what I’m saying. He’d have some soothing quiet then, by God. Except for all the horrified screaming, I guess.

Mary Worth, 6/10/18

Remember, Mary is of a certain age, so she uses euphemisms like “seeing someone at the Medical Arts Building” to mean psychotherapy and “exciting personal life” to mean “non-stop fuckfest with a hot rich dude her son’s age, to which I have given my blessing.”

Spider-Man, 6/10/18

Boy, there’s a lot of musing about hospital administrators padding out this comic before we get to the best: the NEXT: box that boldly uses the completely horrifying phrase “spider of flesh!” Imagine if you will a spider not covered in chitin like the ones you know, but rather just composed entirely of flesh. Just a spider-shaped flesh-chunk, no organs or anything like that, but somehow alive, and moving. Pretty awful, right? Sure would want a fist made of iron to come along and pound it into oblivion!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/10/18

“…with a bigger budget than most, of course. So, in other words, I’m not like a regular mom at all! I’m rich as shit!”