I’ve long had a tremendous fondness for Warner Bros. Looney Tunes. Indeed, I grew up watching Looney Tunes (as well as Tom and Jerry and other comics of its era), long before Cartoon Network started airing them nonstop for customers of cable television. And while the comics present a number of politically-incorrect themes and cartoon violence, I’ve always felt a bit of nostalgia when I see DVDs of Looney Tunes for sale in stores.

Cartoonists can be nostalgic as well, and many of the older webcartoonists grew up on the same cartoons I long enjoyed. But while these old classics will influence a cartoonist’s work, it can be difficult to pay homage to these classics, especially in the static medium that is a webcomic. Josh Lesnick has managed to do this in the latest episode of his surreal comic Girly. Watching as Winter and the not-so-faceless executive of HappyCo. do a classic Daffy Duck/Bugs Bunny routine and pull it off without a hitch is truly impressive. Of course, Girly thrives on the surreal and unusual.

Unfortunately, it has stumbled a bit as it has grown older. The initial blush of adventure and love (and the tease of hinted nudity and sex) found in those early strips has mostly vanished. Instead it feels almost like marriage, where the cast doesn’t need to try as hard to keep the audience because they’re established and you’ve already invested this much time in the comic. At times I’ve even considered putting it into my “read later” pile (which I need to go through someday). But then Lesnick manages to pull out a strip like today’s that reminds me of just why I started reading it in the first place: wacky and funny hijinks. And while it might not have the blush of the first comics, it is strips like this that remind me of why I read, and why Lesnick is at the top of his game.