Comic Strips 2022: Girls Are People!

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > BSS: Bisexual Super Son > Comic Strips 2022: Girls Are People!

Why do you read this thread anyway? This poll is closed.
I enjoy reading contemporary newspaper comics.	64	26.02%
I hate reading contemporary newspaper comics.	42	17.07%
I enjoy reading historical newspaper comics.	88	35.77%
I enjoy reading newspaper comics from foreign countries.	52	21.14%
Total:	246 votes

[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

riderchop posted:

Overboard

I only just now realized that Dunham doesn't actually have any characters with visible eyes, so I suppose it is absolutely possible he has no idea how many eyes things are supposed to have, which is why there's a three eyed snowman.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 02:58

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# ? May 29, 2024 16:31

EasyEW: Mar 8, 2006; I've got my father's great big six-shooter with me 'n' if anybody in this woods wants to start somethin' just let 'em--but they DASSN'T.

Small payload night again...

Mutts

Sally Forth

Pearls Before Swine

Peanuts (February 13, 1975)

Funky Winkerbean

Crankshaft

Mutt and Jeff

Rip Haywire

Thimble Theater (September 14, 1938)

Out Our Way (March 28-30, 1938)

Little Lefty (January 30-February 2, 1936)

There apparently wasn't an "It Can't Happen Here" installment in the February 2nd Sunday magazine, so instead, here's a feature called True Enough, a compatible-with-Marxism knockoff of Hearst lackey Bob Ripley's "Believe It Or Not".

# ? Feb 13, 2022 04:11

Ardeem: Sep 16, 2010; There is no problem that cannot be solved through sufficient application of lasers and friendship.

Twelve by Pies posted:

I only just now realized that Dunham doesn't actually have any characters with visible eyes, so I suppose it is absolutely possible he has no idea how many eyes things are supposed to have, which is why there's a three eyed snowman.

I think that's an ear. Which is another thing that snowmen don't usually have, but makes more sense than the "octopus."

# ? Feb 13, 2022 07:51

Medenmath: Jan 18, 2003

The art in Overboard is impressively lousy. Dunham must actively avoid considering how anything they want to draw actually would look.

EasyEW posted:

There apparently wasn't an "It Can't Happen Here" installment in the February 2nd Sunday magazine, so instead, here's a feature called True Enough, a compatible-with-Marxism knockoff of Hearst lackey Bob Ripley's "Believe It Or Not".

Love it

Prince Valiant

# ? Feb 13, 2022 08:27

Samovar: Jun 4, 2011; When I want to relax, I read an essay by Engels. When I want something more serious, I read Corto Maltese.

Bruceski posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmd1qMN5Yo0

Surely you meant to post this

And now that that's over and done with, in today's Blueberry: Where we last left our heroes (and villains), or Uh... I guess Wooley's slightly off-model in that profile pic, or Vigo ingratiates himself with the local population of Chihuahua

# ? Feb 13, 2022 09:18

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Pondus

The Good Innvandrer

TegneHanne

# ? Feb 13, 2022 10:28

Samovar: Jun 4, 2011; When I want to relax, I read an essay by Engels. When I want something more serious, I read Corto Maltese.

Alhazred posted:

TegneHanne

# ? Feb 13, 2022 10:51

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Samovar posted:

Uh

Yeah.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 11:19

Green Intern: Dec 29, 2008; Loon, Crazy and Laughable

Didn�t you read panel 3? They can split a liver in half if they need to! Everything�s going to be fine. Just. Fine.

:gonk:

# ? Feb 13, 2022 11:52

Strontium: Aug 28, 2009; Dexter didn't much care for the party.

Daddy Daze

Take It From the Tinkersons

Macanudo

Dark Side of the Horse

# ? Feb 13, 2022 12:25

Mercury Hat: May 28, 2006; SharkTales!
Woo-oo!

Any historians who can clue me in on how much was known about the USSR under Stalin outside of the propaganda at the time? I absolutely love Little Lefty for being so on the money about the United States government while having this big blind spot for the Soviet Union, but I'm assuming it's just because the people involved didn't have all the information we do from a modern perspective. I know EasyEW posted a bit about it here when this artist visited, I'm just curious to know more.

EasyEW posted:

Little Lefty's pen pal is revealed (for our purposes, anyway). (January 13-15, 1936)

Jacob Burck was a Polish-American political cartoonist and muralist who was active in the US Communist party (including The Daily Worker and The New Masses magazine) from 1926 to 1936. And this sequence is right at the beginning of '36! Wow, what a coincidence!

Well, the story is that Burck's trip to the USSR was the straw that broke the camel's back. He was in Moscow supervising the installation of one of his murals in the Intourist offices in Moscow, but it was the peak years of Stalin's "cult of personality", and the officials demanded a few too many "Stalin ROCKS!" changes in his work. Eventually he walked out on the job and the Communist movement.

Burck didn't do too badly for himself in the long run, though. Within a few years he started a highly influential, award-winning 44 year run with the Chicago Sun-Times, but his Red past made things highly uncomfortable during the McCarthy years. Because he never formalized his citizenship, the government tried (and failed) to have him deported.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 12:49

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

Medenmath posted:

The art in Overboard is impressively lousy. Dunham must actively avoid considering how anything they want to draw actually would look.

Maybe he's the guy in Plato's cave. Only seeing shadows of things and just having to make up what they look like in his head.

No, wait, that still wouldn't explain the baby seals.

Strontium posted:

Take It From the Tinkersons

I guess there is a market for the Cinco Sleepwatching Chair after all.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 13:13

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

EasyEW posted:

Funky Winkerbean

Mercury Hat posted:

Any historians who can clue me in on how much was known about the USSR under Stalin outside of the propaganda at the time? I absolutely love Little Lefty for being so on the money about the United States government while having this big blind spot for the Soviet Union, but I'm assuming it's just because the people involved didn't have all the information we do from a modern perspective. I know EasyEW posted a bit about it here when this artist visited, I'm just curious to know more.

The state put a lot of effort into positive propaganda, and were far from open and honest about conditions on the ground. Besides cooking stastics at home, they cultivated foreign lefties by offering tours showing how well things were going. The big moment when foreign communists realized Uncle Joe might not be as cuddly as all that was when the USSR rolled tanks in to Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring in 1968, which is a way off yet. Though maybe del would have been a tankie.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 13:21

manero: Jan 30, 2006

Nancy 1947

# ? Feb 13, 2022 13:45

ronya: Nov 8, 2010; I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

Mercury Hat posted:

Any historians who can clue me in on how much was known about the USSR under Stalin outside of the propaganda at the time? I absolutely love Little Lefty for being so on the money about the United States government while having this big blind spot for the Soviet Union, but I'm assuming it's just because the people involved didn't have all the information we do from a modern perspective. I know EasyEW posted a bit about it here when this artist visited, I'm just curious to know more.

D. N. Pritt's coverage of the Moscow Show Trials [Marxists.org, PDF] is worth reading, if only to appreciate just how resilient the same tropes are nearly a century later:

quote:

Some of this criticism was frankly unscrupulous, and a great deal of it was based on unjustified assumptions that the Soviet authorities had been guilty of any and every abuse; but much of it was made in good faith. It seems clear, too, that some criticisms were unfortunately brought about in whole or in part by inaccuracies in or misunderstanding of the reports which reached this country.

Indeed, the more I study the whole of the available material, with the advantage both of my professional training and of having been present at the hearing, and compare it with the very condensed reports which were all that was before most of the critics when they wrote at any rate their earlier criticisms, the more forgiving I feel even towards some of the critics whose conclusions have to my mind been most unsound.

The criticism comes, of course, by no means solely from those observers of whom it is right to say that all they have ever either reported or prophesied about the Soviet Union has been wrong; the critics include both newspapers and individuals of very high reputation for fairness.

It should be realized at the outset, of course, that the critics who refuse to believe that Zinoviev or Kamenev could possibly have conspired to murder Kirov, Stalin, Voroshilov, and others, even when they say themselves that they did, are in a grave logical difficulty. For, if they thus dismiss the whole case for the prosecution as a "frame-up," it follows inescapably that Stalin and a substantial number of other high officials, including presumably the judges and the prosecutor, were themselves guilty of a foul conspiracy to procure the judicial murder of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and a fair number of other persons.

Of course, the less scrupulous critics will be delighted to support that theory; they would always prefer to blacken the rulers of a Socialist country rather than people who confess to having sought to assassinate those rulers; but some of us with memories will find their sudden affection and admiration for Zinoviev and all the "Old Guard" a little comic.

Likewise 'The Moscow Trials: A Statement by American Progressives' (PDF) (if in reading that magazine one feels inclined to think of the CPUSA as a stalwart champion of opposition to international fascism, recall that it promptly went on to discard said anti-fascism the very next year for the period of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact 1939-1941).

# ? Feb 13, 2022 14:42

Vargo: Dec 27, 2008; 'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Alhazred posted:

TegneHanne

Wait, are you posting these out of order or missing some strips or something? This development came out of nowhere, and I noticed these are numbered #238 and #239 but your last post was #214.

Breaking Cat News

Phoebe and Her Unicorn

Wallace the Brave

Curtis

# ? Feb 13, 2022 14:49

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

Holy poo poo a Curtis comic where Barry actually gets punished? This is a once in a lifetime event.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 15:15

Doomykins: Jun 28, 2008; Didn't you mean to ask about flowers?

Jucika "31 - Jucika and Sunspots"

This one might miss the mark slightly if you don't know that there's a superstition that sunspots cause negative events.

"32 - Jucika and the Petticoat Fashion" NSFW Nudity

# ? Feb 13, 2022 15:35

Vox Valentine: May 31, 2013; Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

I know it's a joke but also you can...really just tell the difference without eating the entire thing...yeah. Wups on me I guess.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 15:36

CommonShore: Jun 6, 2014; A true renaissance man

Hostile V posted:

I know it's a joke but also you can...really just tell the difference without eating the entire thing...yeah. Wups on me I guess.

No he shaves with whipping cream that's why mom says "wasn't mean to be eaten" instead of "soap"

# ? Feb 13, 2022 15:49

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Vargo posted:

Wait, are you posting these out of order or missing some strips or something? This development came out of nowhere, and I noticed these are numbered #238 and #239 but your last post was #214.

Sometimes bad poo poo happens out of nowhere. This is what happened here.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 16:00

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Rhymes with Orange

Get Fuzzy 2/13/02

Brenda Starr 2/29/48

Smokey Stover 3/3/46

Everyday Movies 11/2/34

"Oh, Robert, I'm so glad this happened -- now I know you'll drive carefully the rest of the trip."

Bonus News Story! This was front-page news for the Chicago Tribune in 1948. If the font looks odd, it's because the paper was also in the middle of a printers' strike that ran from 1947 to 1949.

Selachian fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Feb 13, 2022

# ? Feb 13, 2022 16:02

The_Other: Dec 28, 2012; Welcome Back, Galaxy Geek.

Mercury Hat posted:

Any historians who can clue me in on how much was known about the USSR under Stalin outside of the propaganda at the time? I absolutely love Little Lefty for being so on the money about the United States government while having this big blind spot for the Soviet Union, but I'm assuming it's just because the people involved didn't have all the information we do from a modern perspective. I know EasyEW posted a bit about it here when this artist visited, I'm just curious to know more.

This is something I wondered about myself, as (according to this entry on The Stripper's Guide) Little Lefty ran until 1943. I wonder if there is going to be any mention of the Molotov�Ribbentrop Pact or the about-face Communist parties had to do after Operation Barbarossa

Mr. Squishy posted:

The state put a lot of effort into positive propaganda, and were far from open and honest about conditions on the ground. Besides cooking stastics at home, they cultivated foreign lefties by offering tours showing how well things were going. The big moment when foreign communists realized Uncle Joe might not be as cuddly as all that was when the USSR rolled tanks in to Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring in 1968, which is a way off yet. Though maybe del would have been a tankie.

I mean, you can't blame the USSR's reaction to the Prague Spring on Stalin, seeing as he had been dead for about 15 years when it happened. Of course it could be that his ghost was behind it.

I just wanted to post these panels.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 16:07

Darthemed: Oct 28, 2007; "A data unit?
For me?"; College Slice

Docks

Retail

Popcom (double Apple edition)

# ? Feb 13, 2022 16:09

Professor Wayne: Aug 27, 2008; So, Harvey, what became of the giant penny?

They actually let him keep it.

The Far Side

Pickles

Zits

# ? Feb 13, 2022 16:45

rannum: Nov 3, 2012

Giant Ethicist posted:

ChaCha Chako

quote:

Night Visitors

# ? Feb 13, 2022 17:40

Nostalgamus: Sep 28, 2010

Storm P

The orinal line is "krisepolitiet" - which is a disaster response team, but also literally "disaster police".

# ? Feb 13, 2022 18:03

Julet Esqu: May 6, 2007

Oh no, please be okay ugly baby :ohdear:

# ? Feb 13, 2022 18:25

Kennel: May 1, 2008; BAWWW-UNH!

Into Ilves

Nancy

Dustin

# ? Feb 13, 2022 18:53

Powered Descent: Jul 13, 2008; We haven't had that spirit here since 1969.

Bizarro

The Family Circus

FoxTrot

# ? Feb 13, 2022 19:04

Murdstone: Jun 14, 2005; I'm feeling Jimmy

Professor Wayne posted:

The Far Side

How dare you :mad:

F Minus

Mark Trail

Mary Worth

Mary loves Outlander.

The Phantom, now in vertical format!

Pooch Cafe

Rex Morgan MD

Andertoons

Flash Gordon

Animal Crackers started showing up in my favorites on Comics Kingdom.

I don't think I'm going to start posting it because it sucks, but it's weird how it suddenly showed up. I didn't ask for it, and this strip isn't even on CK, it's on GoComics. :iiam:

# ? Feb 13, 2022 19:08

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Outlander foreshadows a six month long time travel dream with an English villain who looks like Wilbur.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 19:16

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Murdstone posted:

Rex Morgan MD

"Those pictures of the Doggo Twins are actually ones I commissioned him to produce of my Original Characters ten years ago. I paid him to produce it, and I have the receipt."

"So he has no right to sue us?"

"That's right. That said, I do. Consider yourself Served."

# ? Feb 13, 2022 19:19

Vox Valentine: May 31, 2013; Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

Kennel posted:

Dustin

FATHER I CANNOT CLICK THE BIKE

# ? Feb 13, 2022 19:30

riderchop: Aug 10, 2010; av by @daikonquest!

Garfield

Heathcliff

Overboard

For Better or For Worse

Compu-toon

On The Fastrack

Rae The Doe, which you can support by pledging to the author's Patreon

No Safe Havens on Sundays!

# ? Feb 13, 2022 19:35

davidspackage: May 16, 2007; Nap Ghost

Murdstone posted:

Mary Worth

Mary loves Outlander.

Mary's on the other side of the wall, enjoying the sounds of birthday bangin'.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 19:45

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Murdstone posted:

The Phantom, now in vertical format!

Arc continues to be bad. When the guys fought pirates it was a cool little adventure. When the girls are sleeping in the park it's cause for concern.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 19:50

Fighting Trousers: May 17, 2011; Does this excite you, girl?

Thranguy posted:

Outlander foreshadows a six month long time travel dream with an English villain who looks like Wilbur.

Seems like Outlander would be way too sexy for Mary's tastes. I would have figured her for those Amish romances.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 19:58

EasyEW: Mar 8, 2006; I've got my father's great big six-shooter with me 'n' if anybody in this woods wants to start somethin' just let 'em--but they DASSN'T.

Mercury Hat posted:

Any historians who can clue me in on how much was known about the USSR under Stalin outside of the propaganda at the time? I absolutely love Little Lefty for being so on the money about the United States government while having this big blind spot for the Soviet Union, but I'm assuming it's just because the people involved didn't have all the information we do from a modern perspective. I know EasyEW posted a bit about it here when this artist visited, I'm just curious to know more.

If contemporary readers didn't get the full picture of the Soviets, or at least an unassailable version of it, state censorship had something to do with that, but Stalin having some key reporters willing to play ball didn't hurt either. Walter Duranty's now-infamous Moscow coverage for the Depression-era New York Times is a good place to start on that point, if for no other reason than because it's one thing for "everything's fine in Russia" reporting to come from a US Communist house organ with a circulation that never got out of the tens of thousands, and another to read it in the Times, even if Duranty's accounts were often at odds with the paper's own editorial page.

Malcolm Muggeridge summed up Duranty as "the greatest liar I ever knew". "There was something vigorous, vivacious, preposterous, about his unscrupulousness which made his persistent lying somehow absorbing. I suppose no one--not even Louis Fischer--followed the Party line, every shift and change, as assiduously as he did." That the Soviet censor held Duranty up as a model to the others in the foreign press corps is the worst type of endorsement. It wasn't until the 1990s that the Times admitted he was responsible for some of the worst journalism in the history of the paper. But yeah, basically Uncle Joe's press agent, and influential enough at the time that he was widely credited with influencing the establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and the USSR.

Duranty wasn't the only one on the Times Stalin beat who has credibility issues in retrospect. The first wave of show trials is on the horizon in the Lefty timeline, and at least one of the other Times Moscow reporters, Harold Denny, represented them as a response to the genuine outrage of the Soviet citizens. "In the opinion of Russians an offense involving the life of Stalin can have but one penalty." His source for these "opinions"? Pravda.

# ? Feb 13, 2022 20:10