Crock and Non Sequitur: Why would he like living in jail?

There are two kinds of prison jokes:

1. Prisoners practically have it better than the rest of us!
2. Anal rape!

No, these are not contradictory at all.

*Non Sequitur from 12-31-10

Non Sequitur: Gen X in the Golden Years...

Ho ho, and I bet all their tattoos and piercings will look silly, too!

Oh, Wiley, you hateful, curmudgeonly old fuck, you.

Non Sequitur: Meet the blogger

Really, Wiley? A mother's basement joke? Really?

No one hates new(ish) media like Wiley hates new(ish) media.

Non Sequitur: The discovery of the Ekert continues...

And so this is apparently going to be a really long story about an elephant-fairy that eats bad thoughts.

What the fuck are you doing, Wiley?

Non Sequitur: The first draft...

Odds are good the first draft of this comic strip was nothing more than a drawing of a giant penis.

Non Sequitur: You look like an idiot!

The same person authored both of these comics. True story.

Also, note that the guy holding the sign is wearing overalls.

*First comic is 4-14-10. Second comic is from 4-19-10.

Non Sequitur: OMG! Like the end is totally near :(

Ha ha! The existence of acronyms and emoticons is definitely a good reason to wish for the wanton destruction of all human life! Good point, Wiley!

Non Sequitur: No cell or wifi reception here.

Proof that Wiley is correct about technology ruining everybody's lives: I wouldn't even be able to read Non Sequitur without the Internet.

Non Sequitur: Never the end, only a new beginning.

And thus was every Non Sequitur Sunday strip ever written perfectly summarized in a single line.

Non Sequitur: Won't post my thoughts on your blog for cash.

Wiley's slow transformation into Gary Brookins is dangerously close to fruition.

Non Sequitur: Kyle begins to buy into the notion that Heaven and Hell are actually the same place...

Friend of the blog Alex tweets:

If you could tell me what today's Non Sequitur about Heaven and Hell means, I'd be grateful.

And since this is not a Sunday strip, I'm happy to oblige. What it means is that Wiley hates teh internets. It has nothing to do with Heaven or Hell at all! They're just clever metaphors for how much Wiley hates teh internets.

See, these people are all in this cafe--this no wi-fi cafe! There's no internets here at this cafe. So these old dudes are doing old dude things, like playing checkers and reading the newspaper. The TV's not even plugged in so as to ensure that no internets sneak through that screen either. These old dudes are in "Heaven."

But then there's Kyle, with his laptop and nose jewelry, unable to connect to teh internets. He is in "Hell."

It would be like if there were two people reading this Non Sequitur comic, and one of them was me and one of them was some person who likes it. I would be in "Hell," while the other person would be in "Heaven." Of course, that other person doesn't actually exist. He's a just a metaphor for how much I hate this comic.

Non Sequitur: And here's my favorite app ... it's called the off button.

This comic is hilarious because the guy in the suit hates his cell phone. Of course, this didn't stop him from purchasing it.

Rudy Park and Non Sequitur: You may commence with not bothering to twitter or learn anything more about it.

I know it's an easy joke and exists on the demon Internet and is solely responsible for the decline of civilization and all that, but one would think that newspaper cartoonists would be more hesitant to mock Twitter given that the medium in which they work is defined in large part by its stringent length limitations.

*Non Sequitur from June 13, 2009.

Candorville, Non Sequitur and Pearls Before Swine: My stupid newspaper.

It makes a lot of sense that comics authors would want to write about the looming death of the newspaper, considering they depend on it for their livelihood and whatnot. But one of the dangers of tackling complicated issues in a form as compressed as a comic strip is that it's easy to be a little glib. Take that Candorville strip, for example. (Which, by the way, would have gotten extra points in years previous for the Watchmen homage, but doesn't anymore.) The point of the strip is that young people don't buy newspapers because they've shrunk their comics sections.

But that's a pretty silly point, not least of all because of the situation today's Non Sequitur acknowledges. While comics shrinkage might play a small part in the loss of young readership (I know I like reading the comics in newspaper form), the ability to get all the same information, including the comics, on the internet is a much bigger part of it. Non Sequitur, meanwhile, having recognized the reality of the media shift, inexplicably lashes out at young people, builds a strawman argument about how without newspapers there can be no journalism, and then ends lamely with an arrogant "You stupid kids will be sorry, you will."

Pearls Before Swine is more effective, mostly because it doesn't try to diagnose or solve or even really bitch about the problem. Instead, it just uses the problem as a platform to tell funny jokes about post-it-sized newspapers and Pig beatboxing.

*Candorville from April 30. Non Sequitur and Pearls Before Swine from today.