Prickly City and Get Fuzzy: ...

Maybe I'm getting soft, because I sure am picking a lot of best comics of the day these days, but both of these comics are very funny in a completely different way than today's 9 Chickweed Lane is funny. 9 Chickweed Lane is funny because of its strong dialog. It features no action of interest.

Today's Prickly City and Get Fuzzy, on the other hand, are notable for their limited--or complete lack of--dialog. While the humor in Prickly City is dependent on the dialog, the punchline is image-based.

Get Fuzzy, meanwhile, has been set up by the last couple weeks of Bucky's insane communist Muppet conspiracy theories. Today's strip is Satchel's silent reaction to them. The whole thing is the punchline.

Prickly City: It's the new paradigm, Carmen.

Is it wrong that I like the drawing in all the subsequent panels better than the regular drawing in the first?

Prickly City: There goes that resolution...

This comic is hilarious because Winslow is going to die horribly.

Prickly City: Well yeah, Carmen. They're just criminals. You're a conservative.

This comic is hilarious because Scott Stantis just can't understand why football players--the vast majority of whom, by the way, are thugs and criminals (and black, of course, though that hardly needs to be said, now does it?)--dislike conservatives.

Prickly City: Stalin! Mao! Castro! Che! Chavez!

This comic is hilarious because Carmen accidentally forgot to mention Hitler. Liberals love Hitler most of all.

Prickly City: I've been downgraded to "Wings Rock Band"...

You know, both Wings and Ringo get a bad rap. Wings did some good stuff. And Ringo was a genuinely talented drummer with a showman's flair. Even Yoko gets a bad rap. She is, after all, partially responsible for this. And it's not like The Beatles were going to last forever, anyway.

As for Prickly City, I have to say that I'm much more tolerant of it ever since I started reading Mallard Fillmore. It has two decent characters and is occasionally moderately amusing. It only really suffers, like most political strips, when it gets too political. There's a lesson there.

Prickly City: For a socialist, he sure likes making czars...

While I could do without the final panel's self-congratulatory nod to the mildly obscure historical referentialism, this Prickly City is funny.

Prickly City: It's going to be OK, isn't it, Carmen?

This comic is hilarious because Carmen and Winslow have at last decided to throw themselves off a cliff.

Prickly City: Great news!

This comic is hilarious because Carmen does not understand what a trend is.

Prickly City: Your tush is itchy!

This cartoon is hilarious because the coyote is humping the back of the girl's head.

Prickly City: No matter how much evidence or common sense you foist on us, we will never relent!!!

When Prickly City is the voice of reason, you know things are fucked up.

Candorville, Prickly City and Frazz: Naaaawwww...too dog-ish.

This Candorville is funny, while this Prickly City is not so funny. But the reason I'm highlighting them is that they're both homages to Peanuts. Now, Peanuts is easily one of the best comic strips ever and completely deserves all the homages it receives. But I sometimes wish cartoonists would a pay a bit more attention to other classic comics. I can't even remember ever seeing a Pogo homage, and the last time I saw a Krazy Kat homage was in a Calvin and Hobbes strip.

Speaking of which, Calvin and Hobbes is the other strip that seems to get a lot of love. Frazz, for example, is basically one big Calvin and Hobbes homage.


*Candorville from 8-21-09. Prickly City from 8-22-09.

Prickly City: $9,000,000,000,000.00!

You know what would solve this problem?

Flying to the moon.

Prickly City: Do your worst! You can't make me talk!

The relationship between this little girl and the coyote is really not right.

Also, waterboarding is no worse than going to the salon, ha ha ha.

Prickly City: Why can't secularists talk to people of faith without sinking to name calling?

The best thing about Prickly City is the way it's not hypocritical at all.

Prickly City: By dreaming big we just might overcome how small we can be.

War, poverty and injustice: 0. Trite platitudes: 1.

Next time in Prickly City: Carmen provides fifty million Americans with quality, affordable (and private!) health insurance by climbing Mt. Everest. How? Because if she can scale a mountain that tall, she can do anything!

Prickly City: It's been 40 years. Isn't it time to go back and leave some more?!?

This comic is hilarious because, while it is un-American and irresponsible to want to spend billions of dollars so that everyone in the country can have health insurance, it is fantastically patriotic to want to spend billions of dollars to send a few people to visit a hunk of rock hanging in space.

Prickly City: I'd stop saying, "So this is where they filmed it!" unless you want a Buzz Aldrin knuckle sandwich, Winslow!!!

This comic is hilarious because liberals are moon-landing-denying conspiracy theorists who hate astronauts and America.

Prickly City: You've been seeing another coyote!!!!!!!

Seriously, Prickly City, this is some fucked up shit.

Prickly City: I guess what happened to Jon and Kate should be expected...

This comic is hilarious because of its intimations of underage bestiality.