Personally, I'd like to put the two strips together, with the new one changed to "12 more to go." At first glance, that's what I thought had happened, but then I clicked 'previous.'
As for Tex Avery, Looney Toons, and the like, sure they're disturbing. At some level you're getting a direct look into the artist's mind—that's always going to be disturbing. We spend a massive amount of effort suppressing this and that urge, impulse and thought, but for one moment you're getting the raw deal. Worse, it threatens to expose
your raw deal. That can, indeed, be very uncomfortable, even frightening.
But that doesn't mean I don't still laugh at
Duck! Rabbit, Duck! when I see Daffy get his bill blown off. Part of laughter, I think, involves being uncomfortable, or dealing with the uncomfortable. All the pathos and pain Daffy goes through trying to outsmart Bugs is funny, maybe
because it's pathos and pain, but removed by being centered on a ridiculously unrealistic cartoon character who never dies and even sticks the bill right back on, making it 'safe' to laugh. You know, like a talking, abusive sparrow. I think Jeph's been pretty careful to keep YB and Sweet-tits out of QC's mainstream reality, giving them some of that same distance.
Anyway, I'd have thought the situation every bit as funny if not moreso if it'd been Steve and Marten* (though I can't work out who'd be funnier lighting the rocket). Upset with the violence? Fair enough. But to try to tie this strip to misogyny when
nothing is being done to the female character specifically because of her gender says far more about the folks making those accusations than it does about Jeph. Last time I looked (very recently, I assure you)
both sexes had ass cheeks capable of holding a rocket stem.
Well, mostly. I guess Steve would have to be the launch platform.
*It would resonate more strongly with the 'light a match' family of semi-scatological humor. Girls aren't so much into that, so far as I know. But it fits in with Jeph, who is famous for his fart jokes.