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Beetle Bailey, 9/2/25

Now, I’m not a big shot syndicated newspaper comics artist, but I think that if you have a joke where a general tells a subordinate officer that his uniform cravat (?) isn’t regulation, and then the officer says “And that is?” because the general is wearing a ludicrous golf outfit, the general’s outfit should be a reveal in the second panel. The element of surprise seems key to making it a “joke,” in my opinion, and you’re probably saying, “But Josh, the comics are a visual medium, how are you going to have the general’s dialogue without showing him,” and sorry, that’s not my problem! You could’ve bailed on this joke at any time once you realized this! But you persevered, and here I am criticizing it on my blog, the Comics Curmudgeon. That’s just the way of the world, I guess.

Hi and Lois, 9/2/25

Speaking of surprises, I think if your garbageman tells you that he and his partner attended an awards banquet for some kind of sanitation worker professional association, and you ask how it went, and he tells you that his partner won an award, you shouldn’t look so surprised about it. This is, to be clear, a criticism of Hi, not of the writing of the strip. I’ve already accepted and embraced the fact that Hi and Lois has rejected punchlines for the most part, so I’m fine with that aspect.

B.C., 9/2/25

Ha ha, remember pop-up ads? Remember when they were an example of a new, high-tech annoyance in the world, but now here they are, being joked about as something in the past, in a comic strip where the characters are, literally, ancient cave-dwelling hominids? Does it make you feel like an ancient cave-dwelling hominid? Discuss.

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Dennis the Menace, 8/29/25

We take the eternal struggle between Dennis and Mr. Wilson so much for granted that it rarely occurs to us to ask what Dennis gets out of their interactions. But clearly he must enjoy it at some level; perhaps he even likes and respects Mr. Wilson, and views his neighbor as a role model. In fact, today’s strip reveals that Dennis gets one of his worst traits, his tendency to shit-talk the cooking skills of the person who does all the cooking for him, from the cantankerous old man. Who’s the real menace here, hmm?

Marvin, 8/29/25

The most obvious and tragic feature of the Miller household is, of course, the complete lack of affection among the family members. That’s why it’s so surprising to discover that Marvin and Jeff have actually been bonding. Jeff is happy about it, but check out Marvin’s face: he doesn’t like his father at all, it’s just a plot to annoy his mother, and he’ll be happy to switch his feigned affection from one parent to the other if it will keep the family misery simmering.

B.C., 8/29/25

Since I’m apparently talking about character names in B.C. this week, I will report for those unaware that the three main male characters in the strip are named “B.C.,” “Peter,” and “Thor,” and they are utterly indistinguishable from one another other than via their hair color (red, blond, and brown, respectively). I can never remember which is which, so I always have to consult the character list in the Wikipedia B.C. article when I need to distinguish among them; said list includes some other information about their personality traits (B.C. is a “naïve slob and eternal patsy,” Peter a “self-styled genius and the world’s first philosophical failure,” etc.) that, if they were ever apparent in the strip, have not been for decades, in my opinion. Anyway, I had to go consult the list again this week in order to bring you the news that Thor died. He fucking died. He fell in a water hazard while playing golf and he drowned, and now he’s dead.

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B.C., 8/27/25

A fun thing that happened in B.C. about halfway through the decade or so when I was ignoring it is that the Cute Chick and the Fat Broad got renamed “Grace” and “Jane,” respectively. So, congrats to both of them! I bring this up because the setup to this strip seems to be that Jane went out onto this boat with Curls and her cat, and she told him something about “catfishing” that he didn’t really understand, but he didn’t ask her any follow-up questions for whatever reason. Would he have been so deferential if she was still known only as “the Fat Broad?” Doubtful!

Gil Thorp, 8/27/25

Football season is underway in the Valley Conference! Glad to see in panel one that the refs don’t let a little light-to-medium face-masking interfere with everyone having a good time. Sure, a few necks will be broken, but the surviving players will be even tougher, and within a few generations we’ll have a whole community full of supernecked athletes! Let’s take the long view here.

Alice, 8/27/25

Panels like this are classics of the “A cartoonist experiences something incredibly mundane in their daily life and decides it would make a good comic for some reason” genre, but when Alice does that, it really makes me worry about the origins of the strips with the aliens.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/27/25

Oh, I’m sorry, did you not want to explore your newly discovered familial connection to Cody? Well get ready to be struck dead by an angry God, buddy!!!