Saturday is for the children
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Hi and Lois, 4/13/24
Two things you have to keep in mind when reading today’s Hi and Lois: (a) despite my many jokes about how Trixie is an eternal baby who’s been an infant for 70 years now, we have to understand that, in the world of the strip, she’s actually less than a year old, and (b) the Flagston family dog is named Dawg. Which means that at some point, possibly quite recently, these kids decided to name their baseball team after the dog, but now that there’s something new and exciting on the scene in terms of cute nonverbal family members, they’re willing to just throw out their old name and take on a new one. It makes me sick and I’m just glad Dawg’s not here to see it.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/13/24
Children have long been expected to contribute economically to their households at a pretty young age, particularly in poorer, developing societies. The real unnerving thing here is not that Jughaid’s trying to help pay his way, but the question of where, in a town whose economy is entirely based on criminality, he got the money.
Daddy Daze, 4/13/24
OK, fine, I laughed at this. See, the joke is that the Daddy Daze baby isn’t potty trained, so he doesn’t really see the point of the toilet. He can just poop whenever and wherever he wants, he doesn’t need a special piece of furniture for it! If Marvin tried to pull this off, I’d be furious, but Daddy Daze doesn’t go to the poop joke well too often so I’ll allow it.
115 replies to “Saturday is for the children”
MW:
“He’s a living, breathing hero veterinarian…why, that Harding boy disabled a coyote by punching it in the solar plexus when it tried to attack a pet here in Santa Royale. Oh…wait a minute…that was a Hardy boy, not a Harding boy!”
BG and SS:
“Aunt Loweezy, how come all of the dialogue in this here strip is nuffin’ but contraction, elision ‘n’ colloquialism? Is that s’posed to be funny or sumpin’?”
Hi and Lois: I’m pretty sure that Marvin is already the mascot for a team called “The Baby Bombers.” Because kids that age don’t really care about babies, but they love a good poop joke.
Snuffy Smith: I don’t think even super-cheap restaurants in the Ozarks will still provide lunch for a quarter these days. Also, that’s not even a quarter — it’s a slug. I’m guessing Unca Snuffy has been obtaining them in bulk, because the gumball machine down at the general store can’t tell the difference. (Or maybe a sack full of them is helpful in robbing the place.)
Blondie: “I’ve never been good at this financial paperwork stuff,” says a man who’s seemingly responsible for writing the contracts for an entire construction company. Jeez, Dag, you really should have been fired years ago. Whatever leverage you have on your boss, it must be dynamite. (I mean, literally — I assume Mr. Dithers blew up a building for the insurance money years ago, and you’re the only one who knows about it.)
BG&SS: “No such thing as a free lunch. You gotta WORK to steal that chicken!”
MW: “Damn hero.He gets to march in the Veterinarians’ Day parade, too.”
RMMD: Oh, I see, now. This is going to be a job not for Dr. Rex Morgan, but for a hero Veterinarian!
H&L: Personally, I like “The Fighting Babies.”
MW: As always, the lesson whooshes over Wilbur’s head. Yes, it must be because Dr. Ed is a veterinarian that Estelle chose him. It can’t be because he doesn’t abuse her pets, endlessly harassed her, and enlisted his neighbor in a gaslighting campaign to keep her in the relationship out of some twisted form of pity. After all, it’s not your fault that she can’t handle your endearing quirks.
H&L: We like to joke sometimes that these strips are written by AI, but honestly it never made much sense to me, as the prompt would probably be as long as the dialogue itself. Some days, however, I really have to question how this gets written. “She is good luck.” is such a weird thing to tag on the end of a strip, especially after the “punchline”. Yes, Hi, mascots are supposed to bring good luck, and she would be the mascot in this scenario. Very useful remark.
BGSS: I like how the change of perspective in the second panel lets us see that that ‘quarter’ is about as thick as Jughaid’s finger. It could be a fake coin made out of a button covered in tinfoil, but I suppose it’s also likely that Jughaid’s malnourished extremities are just very small. You know, cause he’s had to pay for his meals since infancy.
SF: Can we just cut to the aftermath with Kev, dripping with the drink or entree his date dumped over him, telling Ted to never speak to him again?
JP: Aaaaannndd there she is….
The name “Baby Bombers” isn’t giving “darnedest Little League team” so much as “edgy thrash metal band whose songs are all called ‘Toilet Mutilation’ and ‘Satan Exploded the Nuns'”.
MW – Hero veterinarian, my arse. It has more to do with Dr. Ed being able to give Estelle an orgasm while Wilbur is nothing more than a puny fish fucker.
HnL: I’m just glad no one suggested “Turning Trixies” for the team name.
BGSS: “You can get a free leech, though, down th’ pond.”
DD: I’m just glad he’s not asking for a double toilet.
If Angus switched places with Trixie, “Baby Bombers” would take on an entirely new meaning…
Frazz: At least Frazz won’t make fun of her behind her back with Caulfield for the wrong reasons.
Luann: Tiffany, Luann is brainless, not brandless.
CS: Any chance you can find the joke in today’s strip? No? Thanks, anyway.
9CL: Today’s double translate is through Japanese, and, somehow, I think Brooke would approve.
“Portree”
“sigmoid”
“Portree”
“sigmoid”
“So, Sister, how is that wonderful world of adjectives in your class?”
Zits: Oof, yeah, you don’t want to get into a generational pissing match with a parent who’s working two jobs, especially when you’re just hanging out at your friend’s house.
FC: “It could be worse. At least I didn’t give my bank information to my translator.”
MW: He probably also doesn’t make the few people who care about him think he’s been dead for some indeterminate amount of time.
H&L: If there’s one rallying cause that gets late grade school boys obsessively excited, it’s preverbal infants. Yep. Young men on the cusp of puberty in a competitive environment? Baby fever.
MW: Just when I think Karen Moy can’t get any dumber, she writes something like this… and totally redeems herself! Wilbur embarking on a ludicrous quixotic quest to do something that makes him look heroic so he can get laid? I didn’t think I could get interested in a Wilbur plot anymore, but I was wrong! Just see this through, Karen. Do that and… [deep breath] …I will forgive the Keith Hillend plot. Not the yoga pets, though. That sin can never be wiped away.
@taig:
“So, Sister, how is that wonderful world of adjectives in your class?”
“Considering they’re saying just ONE adjective instead of using multiple different ones, not good.”
FC: The drawing is kinda ambiguous. Was he embarrassed about his play in the field or the fact that he forgot to wear his dentures?
Mary Worth Mashups: What else could happen to Wilbur as he walks down the street?
@Baja Gaijin: I like the owl attacking Wilbur.
@Baja Gaijin: Maybe a delivery truck filled with mayonnaise will careen out of control and dump its contents right in front of Wilbur. He’ll feel like that kid in Animal House felt when that cheerleader came flying in through the window.
Hi and Lois-“Wait. I have an even better nickname. They used to call my grandfather this. The Baby Killers.”
RMMD-I wonder if ‘Family Circus’ is looking for new characters.
MW-Why they should give Ed Harding his own comic strip series.
Dustin: That’s how boomers react to texts, not millennials or zoomers.
MW: I’m optimistic Wilbur will do something bizarrely stupid…but what’s a hero veterinarian?
MW – Hero vet? Wilbur seems to be under the impression that all those pregame ceremonies and parades with the jets and the flags are for people who take care of dogs. And cats.
MW: He’s a living, breathing hetero veterinarian.
I love the topical humor here.
Luann: Guenther’s brand is sweet? Really? Being a sulky, passive aggressive momma’s boy is sweet?
Hi and Lois: More importantly, what the hell is the joke supposed to be here? Is there one? I’m starting my Saturday blinded with rage over this.
“No, it’s great! We can have a mascot race featuring Arthur Harris, Curtis LeMay, Albert Kesselring, and Henry Kissinger! People will love it!”
MW: Come on, Wilbur, you shouldn’t be stewing in jealousy over people who go around pushing their pets in a stroller and one of those baby-carrier holster things. You should be thinking “thank God I dodged that bullet.”
Which is why Gunther finished first in our Most Despicable poll. If the Evansii presented him for what he is (your description), we’d accept it. But they push him off as perfectly sweet, and he becomes despicable.
Even Moy has caught on to what a douchebag Wilbur is, despite this “endearing quirks” thing. Of course, Moy still presents Mary as this lovable matriarch whom everyone loves. But I supposed she has to do that.
@Baja Gaijin:
MW Mashups: Definitely number three
LUANN – Yeah, Gunther as perfectly sweet made zero sense. He’s a whiny, pissy little bitch.
This whole thing is, of course, stupid. For $500, you get a two name description that they can call a “brand”? Ok. Spend $500, get a Brand, and yadda yadda “hence, their riches!”
BGSS: I call bullshit. “Lonch” isn’t hillbilly vernacular, it’s French.
9CL – That’s the problem when your “school” consists of two nuns, two kids, a sandbox, a swingset, and an empty void. The environment for learning leaves much to be desired. Especially when there is no evidence of class schedules or assignments or anything, the two students just wander the void together all day speculating about human sexuality.
I guess we’ve exhausted the potential storylines involving adult Amos and Edda (“they go down to the water. Edda wears a bikini”) and now are out of potential storylines where suddenly they are kids again, so now we have to have storylines set in an alternate reality where Edda is portly and they are kids again.
CS: What a backwards and unearned conclusion. I haven’t seen such a thematically confused and broken week of comics since I read Crankshaft last week.
JP: Fucking hell, Pavel’s seat isn’t even cold yet and Helena’s already deus ex machina’d her way into the story. As usual, there are so many reasons why this is stupid that I feel like it’d be insufferably longwinded to even mention the top ten of each category with just a few words each. I’ll just save my energy for now and let this play out a little more, because I’m pretty sure this next week will be seeing Helena make several claims every day that make my head explode.
Luann: Remember three weeks ago when Tiffany arrive at the dorm at exactly 1:20 AM after her shift at work where Bets was trying to finish her homework and both of them were exhausted? Well, since then – which again was made explicitly clear as being late at night with a clock showing the specific time – they’ve been up working manically on this dumbass branding project for hours. Now, without Tiffany having even changed out of her work attire, they’re ringing Luann’s doorbell to get her to take their questionnaire.
What time do the Evanses think it is at this point?
Moving on, we see the Evanses still misunderstanding their own cast. I have quibbles with all of the “brands” they’ve assigned to these fuckheads, but Gunther’s especially stands out. I’m not sure that screaming at people over trifles and taking malicious pleasure in your girlfriend’s financial downfall while you cheat on her is what I’d call “perfectly sweet,” but Greg and Karen will never stop propping up Gunther as a kind-hearted great guy no matter how little sense it makes.
Then there’s Luann. This one… yikes. The main character of a 40 year old series, and the Evanses’ take on her is that her entire personality is empty. No, really, today they literally have an arrow pointing at her that says “vacant.” This is a self-report verging on a day-before-the-tragedy cry for help. How do you write a character for this long and come up with nothing to distinguish her from other characters? This is what happens when you finally glance into the abyss of your own creation and realize it’s been staring at you for decades.
Then again, it’s been three weeks, so odds are they’ll be dropping this existential catastrophe after today and pivoting to a Bernice or Gunther plot.
Don Abundio, translated:
“How’s the training coming along?”
“Not so great… Monin fetches sticks just fine…”
“But I can’t train this dumb cop to let go of his billy club!”
H&L: Could be that someone is a Cleveland Browns or University of Georgia fan. Someone among the commentariat is among the latter, IIRC.
@jroggs: The main character of a 40 year old series, and the Evanses’ take on her is that her entire personality is empty. No, really, today they literally have an arrow pointing at her that says “vacant.” This is a self-report verging on a day-before-the-tragedy cry for help. How do you write a character for this long and come up with nothing to distinguish her from other characters?
How long before Luann is renamed Piranha Club?
FG: The dragonman isn’t going to be able to put anything over on Queen Fria; she can read him like a Bok.
MW: Our terrific Threesome get a well-deserved Saturday off after their show-stopping performances last week! Libby had a soft landing from her ‘nip trip, and the others are stretching their legs after being cramped in that stroller. Estelle and Ed have been put back into their suspended-animation chambers heh heh heh Just kiddin’ folks! Although Ed’s agent did make them put in that line that he was living and breathing!
BARNEY GOOGLE AND SNUFFY SMITH: Jughaid: “Yep, that shor’nuff do sound like the man best known for’ chicken theivin’. I reck’n the cartoony-making person plum done forgot Unca Snuffy’s most basic trait. Whoops.”
MW: Wilbur is going to start rescuing abandoned dogs and cats until a rabid pomeranian rips his face off.
BGSS: At first I thought the “quarter” was a hardware nut, which Jughaid assumes is legal tender as he has no other basis for comparison. Come to think of it, that could still be the case.
H&L: “Okay, that’s a good first draft, now maybe let’s modify the name to something that doesn’t sound like it should be written on an anti-war protest sign?”
@Lord Flatulence: MW: He’s a living, breathing hetero veterinarian.
Or a hetero-narian.
RMMD: Well, well – it’s Candy, the “new puppy” making a surprise appearance! And she gets a speaking, action role instead of just a pose on a holiday card! Of course we’ve made discreet approaches to her to sign up with our agency…just like with Abbey the Wonder Dog… but they both are content with their situations there. They apparently get full salaries for maybe one appearance every few years, free grooming, medical and dental, plus generous 401k plans.
I have to wonder if Abbey has retired, or…. No, they wouldn’t let her cross the rainbow bridge off-panel, would they? She deserves at least a heroic Farley-type sendoff! Maybe we could send them some suggested storylines, anonymously, of course. They have our regular number blocked…
DT: “Croptop, what are you doing with your share?” What henchman asks this? Is he expecting she’s gonna buy lots of pretty dresses? “Oh, I figured I’d spend it on rent and groceries for the next eight months, then rob another bank. It’s kind of what I do. To live.”
In Kyle Baker’s 2000s take on the legendary Plastic Man origin story, one of Eel O’Brien’s stooges announces he’s going to “buy all the ice cream in the world!” which I thought was a nifty ambition.
RMMD – “We’re not making peppermint bark, you stupid dog! We only make that at Christmastime!”
Hi And Lois: With luck, Trixie’s role as mascot will climax with her taking a fastball to the skull, ending her unholy immortality.
Daddy Daze: Daddy Daze Daddy’s hallucinatory conversations with his child are getting more serious and elaborate. Can’t wait until we get a strip where he’s screaming at his infant about not paying his share of the rent, only to attack when he interprets a “ba” as an insult towards his mother.
If we go with the theory that the Daddy Daze daddy is just imagining the conversations with a baby who only says “ba”, then this is him convincing himself that he doesn’t want to sit on a normal piece of furniture soaked in his own bodily wastes. So… good for him on making the right choice?
H&L: I guess “The Baby Batters” got censored.
BG&SS – Something I’ve always wondered about Jughaid: did he order his coonskin cap from a catalogue, or did he kill and skin a raccoon and make it himself? I want to believe it’s the latter.
LUANN: Aaarrgghhh!™ Gunther — sweet???? “Perfectly”?? sweet? Gunther patrols his mother’s cunt, steadfastly refuses to fuck the girls who unaccountably want to fuck him, has violent fantasies about other men who might fuck the girls he refuses to fuck, talks nasty, personal shit about people behind their backs, particularly his girlfriends, and spends his alone time delighting in the pain and frustration suffered by others including both financial pain and sexual frustration. Look, Evansii, just have Luann open his closet and find a hockey mask, a bloody hammer, and a multiracial skinsuit and write this (non)fucker OUT of your strip!
H&L – We could change our name to the steaming full diapers….
BG&SS – Gruel & grits give me the shits. Well, that’s what unca Snuff says….
DD – A twin bidet….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
9CL: They’re repeatedly calling each other “fat” and “asshole” (well, “colon” but in Brookeworld accuracy always takes a backseat to pretension), but since they’re doing it with smug intellectual words it means they’re destined to be together. Or something.
C’shaft: I humbly submit the Neighborhood Hardware Store is not going out of business due to the encroachment of soulless big-box chains and the Funkyverse’s general guiding principle of Change is Always Bad and Scary, but is the inevitable result of business practices like “vibes-based inventory tracking.”
DT: No, I’m sorry, we had a villainess with a rare book shtick in the past year or so, pick another lane.
(I realize the state of technology in Neo-Chicago is best described as “whatever,” but are payroll robberies even a thing anymore? Even before the advent of direct deposit I would think paychecks would have rendered them obsolete…)
HotC: This sounds like one of those human interest stories that is supposed to be heartwarming but basically boils down to “Local Minor is Forced to Take on the Burden of Correcting Massive Institutional Flaws.”
Luann: At least Clan Evans has finally admitted that Luann’s “Inner Beauty” is a big empty nothing.
MW: “We had a good thing going, and she throws it all away for someone who’s tall and good-looking and successful and sensitive and kind to animals and doesn’t reek of fast food grease and flop sweat. I can’t believe Stell would be so shallow!”
P&HU: Makes about as much sense as any other narrative limit imposed on time travel.
Pluggers will hoard literally anything. And don’t understand why the big gal at the hardware store starts laughing every time he mentions his “ring of keys.”
RMMD: Sarah has always been mature for her age; she’s already internalized seniority as not something to be proud of but a deep shame that sets finite limits on her value.
FC – I sure hope there weren’t any major league scouts out there today. Dolly told me my name wasn’t on the pitching schedule for today, so I didn’t bother to show up.
Rex Morgan – Good grief, the boys are now in their fifties and are turning into gnomes.
Mary Worth – I laughed out loud at “hero veterinarian.”
@Baja Gaijin: Mashups – I like the third one.
LUANN: So….despite being in college for a while and attending many different classes (and specifically, despite growing up around wealthy influential people and putting their “exciting” life on display on the internet respectively), Tiff and Bets have NO friends or known contacts outside of dorm/work life (not even the other collegates who reside in their hall.)
Yep, these are the well-connected girls I trust to advertise my “brand” all right!
LUANN (2): “Batubs” should probably pick a different test case, since Greg and Karen Evans have already claimed Luann*. After all, every other Luann character subplot is them trying (and failing) to “rebrand” her by giving her a new spontaneous hobby or career path that everyone has to pretend she’s good at.
*Incidentally, it’s good to note the the “Luann” character, the one who currently has “vacant” pointed right at her is supposedly “inspired by” Greg’s then-teenaged daughter, Karen. Just a reminder of some lovely family dynamics in action.
@TheDiva: re: DT: I bet Croptop just wants a copy of the oversized slipcased hardcover double volumes of MAD’S The Complete Don Martin. I needed to ask Santa for my copy back in 2007 when it was $120 new; now that it’s out of print it runs over $150.
DD: “It’s pronounced, ‘bi’-det, idiot child!”
FRAZZ: yes, let’s remember to thank all the diligent hard-pressed tax accountants on Tuesday. Three things I never dreamed of– becoming a coal miner, becoming a urologist, or becoming an accountant.
@TheDiva: “ 9CL: They’re repeatedly calling each other “fat” and “asshole” (well, “colon” but in Brookeworld accuracy always takes a backseat to pretension)”
“Sigmoid” is thesaurus for “shaped like an S”, which is how Amos is drawn in this sequence, especially yesterday’s installment.
Fred Basset Spanish to English.
FC: “And after an eight consecutive whitewashing the Dawgs, and their mascot–inexplicably a one-year-old in a stroller–will meet their fate at an upstate farm.”
Gasoline Alley: I think every day should just be random people having conversations with Walt saying “What’d you say?”
@Activist 1234: I’ve lied to girls in bars about all three of those things and “coal miner” beats the others six ways from Sunday. Everybody wants to make it with a coal miner, especially once you admit eating Timothy.
@jroggs: Minority view: Branding is largely artifice and simplification. Tiffany’s encapsulations aren’t meant to show readers what the characters actually are, but how her impression of them is superficial. Gunther is an example of Tiffany not understanding that his supposed meekness is a front for his Nice Guy narcissism.
With Luann, however, Tiffany almost breaks the fourth wall, recognizing that the Evansii never gave their title character a personality other than mooning over Aaron. For years they’ve been writing an ensemble strip without recognizing it.
JP – Didn’t Ted Forth say the same thing about Nona a few months ago?
FG: Okay, we’ve been talking about pirate miners for a while now, and I’m still not entirely sure how one mines for pirates.
HtH: But… but how did Rapunzel get into the castle to do this? And however she did it, couldn’t somebody with a rope have done the same thing?
Heath: As always, the most disturbing part of the whole thing is how blasé people have become. “Yeah, if you buy a hot dog around here, you have to expect a cat to descend on you from a great height and devour it, and maybe your hand if you don’t let go. That’s just how things are. Why do you think you’re my only customer?”
JP: Many years ago, I read an article by, I think, the late Diana Wynne-Jones about writing children’s fiction. One thing she said was that you shouldn’t just go “and then… and then… and then…” under the assumption that children want to read a story the way they’d write it; kids write that way because they’re not practiced in writing stories. I have no idea why I suddenly remembered about this when reading Judge Parker.
Pluggers: True story: For years I had a work keychain holding my computer keycard, my desk drawer key, and my locker key. But I never used my locker, because everything fitted in the desk drawer. Last year, we got new lockers and were told we had to check the old ones were all empty, so I thought it was best to be on the safe side. I couldn’t remember my locker number, so I decided I’d just wait until everyone else was done, and see if my key turned in one that was still locked (there were a few, presumably belonging to people who’d left and had forgotten about them). And that was when I discovered that my key and the locks on the lockers weren’t even from the same manufacturer. It’s still on the keychain and I have no idea what it’s actually for.
Hi and Lois – The Dawgs/Baby Bombers will threaten to leave the neighborhood unless the city’s Parks Department approves renovations to their ballpark
BG&SS – Jughaid set up an illegal parking meter for the few Flatlander tourists that come to town for their “Tradwive” content, only to be scared away by what real frontier rural life looks like
Daddy Daze – Marvin definitely is a devil sent down to punish his parents for the sins of their youth. Daddy Daze baby Angus, on the contrary, is sent to attempt to redeem this sad sack John Arbuckle wannabe. Angus is doing the best he can as a nonverbal infant with very advanced abstract thinking skills. Let’s just hope Daddy doesn’t manage to crush this kid’s creative thinking skills before they can fully develop
@TheDiva: (I realize the state of technology in Neo-Chicago is best described as “whatever,” but are payroll robberies even a thing anymore? Even before the advent of direct deposit I would think paychecks would have rendered them obsolete…)
There was a Marvel comic book back in the 2000s (Marvel Age) that retold the earliest Spider-Man stories in the present day. In their take on the second Vulture story, they keep the bit where the Vulture plans to rob the Daily Bugle payroll, but have him baffled to find that the safe just contains cheques, with Jonah asking him what century he thinks it is.
If they retold it today, the safe would probably just contain a “Publisher of the Year” award that JJJ awarded to himself.
@Tonio: In a more nuanced and self-aware series, you’d be absolutely right about that distinction. Luann, however, is not that series. Is there any character who would disagree with any of these labels? Maybe in phrasing – Les would probably call Gunther a goody two-shoes rather than a sweetheart – but these characters vary little in how they interpret each other broadly. That’s why I treated these labels as intended canonical traits rather than Tiffany’s unique perspective, because they’re pretty much how every character in this series would describe each of these characters, and it’s very obvious that the authors encourage readers to draw the same conclusions.
@Philip: ALL the wives in Hootin’ Holler are “Tradwives,” just without the makeup and push-up bras.
Daddy Daze-Even if the love is self love?
MW: A few blocks further along, a crowd has gathered where a truck has overturned. It was carrying rare aquatic specimens to the world-famous Santa Royale Aquarium, and now the fish and other sea creatures are flopping around all over the street!
Truck driver: “Is there a marine biologist in the crowd?”
Wilbur: “I… I have some fish food.”
@75 Myrtle:
Luann: “I’m a marine biologist.”
Pluggers-“There is a building. Inside this building there is a level where no elevator can go, and no stair can reach. This level is filled with doors. These doors lead to many places. Hidden places. But one door is special. One door leads to the source.”
Luann-Gunther’s brand: Controlling Momma’s boy
Luann-“Not really. Our paths were bound to cross once again. It is your comic strip after all.”
@Sequitur: “I’m a marine biologist.”
Another example of Luann’s unrecognized genius!
MW-And cue ‘The Lonely Man’ theme.
Pluggers: Not that it matters what the keys unlock – the locked boxes, chests, and other items are all at the pawn shop.
PHANTOM (Last Sunday): ah, Kit Sr., to ouve just blown part of your cover. Every Jungle Patrol patrolworker knows about two way radios and probably also about FaceTime.
Now they know you’re never really in your office, but they need to have private coups discussed outside nonetheless. If it’s stormy, talk inside only after you find and cover the camera and mic.
Pluggers-Pluggers are longing for the day Sigourney Weaver will ask them if they are the Keymaster.
@Myrtle: Poor Rhinoman.
@MKay: H&L: Personally, I like “The Fighting Babies.”
First rule of Fighting Babies is: We don’t talk about Fighting Babies.
@Horace Broon: #69:
“pirate miners”
I don’t know if that would qualify as piracy but I had a distant relation in Roscoe, Pennsylvania who ran a bootleg one-man coal mine out of his backyard. His mine entrance was a toolshed backed up to a steep hillside.
JP: Oh wonderful, Helena’s back. As a Boomer woman, I will observe that Helena strongly reminds me of a certain Extremely Mean Girl I knew in junior high, and that’s one reason I hope she will fall off a very tall cliff with no bungee cord.
GA: Not only is Walt going on expeditions away from his house in spite of his bizarrely-advanced age, but this diner has magic booths that swivel and shape-shift according to whatever perspective the artist has in mind. So why not show a huge old-style safe plunging out of a clear blue sky and killing that awful City Hall cigar dude as he strolls toward his car in the parking lot? I, for one, would greatly enjoy that.
Dennis Minus Menace: No, Dennis, you could break a whole mirror factory and still not be interesting.
LUANN: I don’t necessarily loathe Gunther for all the same reasons described in many comments today. But it certainly does give me a warm glow to be reminded that if collective CC loathing could kill, Gunther would have been reduced to a tiny black crumbling cinder many years ago.
@Garrison Skunk: Dennis just bought himself seven years of bad luck. He is fucked until he’s twelve. Perhaps puberty then with grant him a huge penis.
@87 Poteet:
You’ll have plenty of her tomorrow.
The most interesting thing in today’s three strips is the odd change in perspective between the two panels of Snuffy Smith, so that tells you how engaged I am with the comics world today.
@Lord Flatulence:
Gasoline Alley: I think every day should just be random people having conversations with Walt saying “What’d you say?”
_______________
Then Walt wins the mayor’s race, just like the late Ed Kotch did with “How am I doing?”
Ditto: Hey look! Mr. Thurston is drinking a beer, let’s call ourselves the Beers!
H&L: Don’t name your team “The Baby Bombers” unless you want the fans to think about what a baby would bomb with.
DT: If you want your heist to go off smoothly you should bring at least one accomplice who’s too intimidating for the victims to argue with. The two aging Friends cosplayers don’t really qualifty.
Dustin: The long text wasn’t by any chance a suicide note, was it?
JP: It was only in Thursday’s strip that April said she didn’t know how she was going to find her mom. Her mom blinking into the Parker household like Endora should give you some idea of how quickly these problems tend to solve themselves.
Luann: From the little I understand of branding it’s very different from you having all your friends pigeonholed in your head. And yes, I am bypassing the “perfectly sweet” designation for Gunther.
MW: “Forever” wasn’t in the cards, although “seems like forever” was.
MG&G: I always thought of grotesque bird people discussing their sordid sex lives as more of a Shoe thing. The hairdresser must be angling for a transfer, for some reason.
Phantom: As the Phantom speaks with the warrior of the Queen’s Guard, Devil decides that he’s ready for his closeup, Mr. DeMille.
S4th: You’ve been married to her long enough to have an adolescent daughter, Ted. Take a wild guess.
@18 Baja Gaijin:
I like the one with Hot Stuff the little devil, my wife likes the owl but there is a FOURTH OPTION.
@jroggs:
I have a better ‘brand’ for Luann than they came up with: “Always WRONG.”
This is because back when Evans was teaching English Lit Gibberish, someone a damn sight like Luann made the mistake of pointing out that not learning whatever pre-packaged nonsense he was teaching wasn’t going to affect her life all that much. He’s had it in for the Luanns of the world ever since.
luann not only will luann be tiff and bets first test subject but also as a bonus they also get to test the thing on bernice too or bernice will be the one who they try it on more. and then they will get steph wanting to try it out too.rmmd the big question now is will the brownies not set off the fire alarm once in the stove and will they be edible.
Hey, a quarter is a quarter.
Late Thread Cuisine: No tongue, I swear!
@101 Baja Gaijin:
How festive!
@Tonio: To be fair, this plotline simply acting as a subtle “Aren’t those cheerleaders a bunch of shallow bimboes” dig does match the usual Evans writing style.
@nescio: “I said ‘lonch,’ not ‘launch’!”
@Baja Gaijin: Did someone really think that was a good idea?
Gelatin but no olive eyes.
@Baja Gaijin: Salads and Their Dressings sounds like a culinary version of The Theatre and Its Double, or maybe Civilization and Its Discontents. “Zucchini-Tomato Molds” would be the anarchist bomb-throwing chapter.
Pluggers: Pluggers can not remember anything.
Daddy Daze: Josh, please don’t go to the poop joke well, even once. It’s contaminated.
@Baja Gaijin: It’s tomorrow’s lonch!
@droosan: Those were the days.
Poor Wilbur. He needs to head to Tokyo to console himself with a pizza made just for him.
@Baja Gaijin: Um, yeah. Wilbur’s welcome to that one.
@112 Artist formerly known as Ben: That pizza, sans shrimp and green peppers, is fairly common in Japan.
@Baja Gaijin: I like green peppers, and in some contexts shrimp is fine, but I can’t quite get behind the shrimp in the pizza sauce. YMMV.
Luann 4/14: We get a big old whiff of why Inner Beauty is defined as vacant: she refuses to admit that she’s declaring generation warfare on boomer nitwits like Greg by….uh…living in the present day.