Real sad situations
Post Content
Beetle Bailey, 8/25/25
Comedy is, in large part, the art of subverting your audience’s expectations in ways they find pleasing. So you could see how it might make sense in theory to do a comic strip where a soldier yells “INCOMING!!” while pointing to the sky, setting up an expectation that he’s on the front lines and his position is about to get hit by an artillery barrage, only to reveal in panel two that he’s about to get pooped on by a bird, a much less life-threatening scenario. However, longtime readers know that the idea of any of Camp Swampy’s troops being deployed into combat is laughable, so the joke doesn’t really land. I will note that the second panel reinforces the punchline by showing us that Sarge and Beetle are hanging out somewhere littered with power lines, which provide ample places for birds to hang out while also being significantly easier to draw than the birds themselves.
Marvin, 8/25/25
“Marvin hates going to preschool” isn’t a strip theme I dwell on much, as it’s a less obvious target for mockery than “Marvin loves pissing himself,” but it’s just as grim in its own way. Today we learn that he hates going to school so much that he’d rather sit immobilized in his car seat indefinitely, his only company a parent who’s presumably fuming about traffic and who doesn’t feel much affection for him at the best of times, than go there. At least in this situation he can piss himself if he wants, I guess.
Dustin, 8/25/25
Wow, huge news! Dustin has finally stopped going to fern bars to find love and is joining the rest of his generation, along with the two generations before him, on the apps. He’s apparently still getting his bank statement sent to him in the mail, but, you know, baby steps.
39 replies to “Real sad situations”
Pluggers: Wouldn’t the panel work better with the caption if he was holding, I dunno, A WALLET?!!?
Slylock Fox: Waitaminute. What hidden lab? Slylock and Max are there all the time accusing Weirdly of something or thwarting Weirdly’s cunning prison cells using detritus stewn around the cell.
Since Dustin has decided to drink directly from the carton, I think we should not assist his attempts to reproduce
“Her profile says that she loves to laugh”. Then she shouldn’t be in the nationally syndicated “Dustin” comic strip!
B. Bailey: Isn’t “The Bird,” more properly “The Old Bird” referring to the General? I don’t blame him for wanting to bomb his own troops, especially these two. A confident Sarge notes they’ll need a Blockbuster to penetrate his skull.
BB Ah, the Beetle Bailey / Shoe crossover we’d all been waiting for.
Marvin don’t those baby seats typically face backwards these days? I mean, presuming you don’t wish your baby harm…
I guess about three weeks ago a King’s Features editor showed up to work for the first time in eight years, squinted briefly at the phrase “That bird just pooped on my head,” frowned disapprovingly and pulled out a red pen.
Marvin: Shouldn’t that baby seat be rear-facing? Otherwise, Marvin could be seriously injured if…oh. Never mind, carry on.
yCurtis: In seventeen states, if they uploaded those pics of Curtis to their social media, they would be arrested for child porn.
We have a strip where someone gets pooped on, followed my Marvin, and Josh doesn’t even note the contrast. He sure has got jaded.
Sarge: After a bird poops on you, don’t look up. Does the army not teach the troops about double tap strikes?
MW: What Vicki would be saying in the non Worth-o-verse: “You could’ve drowned me, you little creep! What in the hell were you thinking? Get your weird-ass outta here!”
Naomi’s the only one who gets it. (Ed having quickly backed down on Mary’s orders.)
MuskSlylock: “Max! Go tie some party balloons to that rampaging robot.”MW: “You should HANG OUT with us sometime.” Vicki issues a vague invitation for some kind of social get-together in the murky future in a location as yet undetermined to do nothing in particular with a group that includes at least one stubbornly unwilling and overtly hostile participant. “I’d LIKE that!”
RMMD: “…But, maybe if I personally deliver a muffin basket, he’ll change his mind.”
GT: “While Coach Thorp is busy perfecting his intrepid hero pose, the entire team has fallen into a sinkhole!”
BB: A nice change for Beetle; from KP to Avian Annihilation. Because NOBODY craps on Sarge’s head.
Beetle Bailey – Having casually studied the history of intelligence agencies’ crazy research in the Cold War, and the ways in which US troops were often unwittingly used, it wouldn’t surprise me that black ops was still using Camp Swampy as testing grounds for various experiments.
Officially the “bird bomb” experiment is supposed to train birds to target enemies of America in other nations with biological agents via feces, though in practice the CIA is just using this as a live-action video game to see how often they can hit their least favorite Camp Swampy characters.
Marvin – Marvin likes anything that prevents him from having to mature or advance as a person – preschool, potty training, coming up with new jokes for his strip.
Dustin – I am sending his date a picture of how Dustin drinks orange juice straight from the carton in a disturbing way.
Beetle Bailey: For some reason, the art today seems particularly two-dimensional. It reminds me of the old Flannelgraphs Sunday School teachers used to use to break down complex Bible stories into simplified visual narratives. Whole lot of kids walking away confused and questioning their belief in God after reading Beetle Bailey today, is what I’m saying.
@pugfuggly: @Pozzo: Rear-facing is only possible for small enough babies / toddlers. Laws typically require until age 1, but most seats have a limit to about age 2 – and each has an actual height and weight limit that’s usually reached at 2, 2.5 years – any bigger load and the seat could fail entirely in a crash. With Marvin in preschool (3+), only the fanciest and most expensive car seats could safely be used rear-facing, and I doubt his parents care enough to buy that!
Dustin: “See, her profile pic shows her with a big ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ sticker on her wall, and I guess some artwork by her grandchildren too?”
Pluggers: You’re a plugger if you forgot you used the exact same joke about “Facebook” last week.
Marvin: Joke’s on Marvin: his car seat isn’t anchored to the seat behind him, and also it’s clearly a sofa where he’s been deposited for quiet/neglect time.
Beetle Bailey: Why’s Beetle crouching in terror in the second panel?
Oh. It’s the decades of unpredictable physical abuse. Never mind.
FC and Beetle Bailey: Beetle will be yelling “Incoming!” when he sees Billy Circus on his flying skateboard!!
Dustin: Tell your date that you had tried finding a date at a church–and all the date prospects (who were older than Dustin’s grandmother) turned him down.
JP: Wow, the CIA even has a regional HQ in Cavelton and is detaining American judges on US soil now? Where is Antifa when we need them?
DT: So the major crime unit saved the two businesses to last?
MW: Hip Hip Hooray for Olive! Hip Hip Hooray!
JP: Are they in Washington DC or is that another CIA HQ?
RMMD: No means no, Cody!
Slylock: Wouldn’t be easier to use some of the party supply store supplies like glitter glue or silly string or paint? This is the moment where Max quits “No, NO WAY, am I crawling up to that killer bot to tie a balloon.”
BB — Um, birds aren’t real.
Or did we stop doing that?
Dusty — You found a date online–find some jokes there too! It can’t be more difficult. . . .
MW – Vicki and her posse are confident of taking first prize by inviting Olive to a nerd party.
“He’s apparently still getting his bank statement sent to him in the mail, but, you know, baby steps.”
In fairness to Dustin, which is a phrase for which I deeply apologize, he could be getting it inside some banking app on his phone, which he could then show to his date.
Dustin Dudes, you’re creating a comic strip in 2025. You sure you want to be joking about pathetic bank statements?
Dustin: Well, with her usual snark and looks of dead-eyed longing, Megan is trying to keep her brother for herself. Dusti should not be drinking milk out of the cart–he should be drinking Folgers.
Marvin: Shouldn’t the focus be on whichever of Marvin’s parents realizes because of traffic they won’t be able to dump the little package of joy at preschool before he drops his own package?
“Her profile says she loves to lash! I’m thinking she meant laugh, and, you know, autocorrect.”
Dustin: Either Dustin hasn’t figured out by now that asking his sister for assistance or advice is just an open invitation for her to insult him (in which case he’s beyond help), or this is some twisted form of humiliation play for him (in which case the rest of us did not agree to participate in your kink, dude).
Slylock Fox-Slylock will be doing nothing. It will be Max risking his life to tie balloons to the robot.
RMMD-“So that’s a no on coming over for Christmas then?”
MW-As somebody somewhere yesterday pointed out one of the former mean girls went from ambiguously brown to snow white.
FC-“How long do you think PJ is going to keep rolling like that?”
Dustin-“Men pay me to go out on dates with them,” Meg says.
Either the perspective was too much work to figure out in a daily gag strip or Sarge and Beetle were subjected to gigantification experiments by the army, and I can’t see a cartoonist phoning it in.
MW: If Moy can drag out an inane phone conversation for most of the week, then she can drag out Olive getting her undeserved accolades from Little Orphan Knockoff and Cafe Latte (Spicy Latina has been whitewashed with the brush of friendship).
RMMD: One brother went on to become a moderately successful roots country singer. The other went on to become a notorious outlaw landscaper. They next meet on the gallows where Cody, moonlighting as an executioner, places the noose around his brother’s neck. “I should not have rejected you all those years ago!!” bawls Jonah.
Wikipedia entry for Truck’s biggest hit: My brother, My foe [citation needed]
BB: They can’t show birds in this comic strip! What do you think this is?!? Shoe?!?
Marvin: He does look like he’s shit himself.
Dustin: Today I learned Dustin has a proboscis. That’s the only way he can drink that orange juice(?) as drawn.
C’shaft: “You know, our only grandson, Mitch? Whose name, Mitch, I’m sure you know, and whom you could infer I was talking about by just saying ‘our grandson’ but who hasn’t appeared in the strip in a long time so the audience might have forgotten he exists altogether so I feel it’s important to give his name, Mitch, in order to bring everyone up to speed on the fact that we have a grandson and his name is Mitch? That grandson, Mitch?”
Also, you cannot convince me that Crankshaft doesn’t look forward to another year of tormenting children. This is his Christmas morning.
GT: From the look of panel one, I’m guessing what he has in store is some kind of acrobatic routine.
JP: “I was just trying to be polite–either that or I was trying to issue a veiled threat disguised as politeness. Either way the implications have gone over your thick skull, so let’s move on.
MW: Naomi’s Kermit-scrunch face is a perfect depiction of my reaction to this nonsense.
@Liam: Yeah, there’s some unfortunate implications going on here whether or not it was intentional or just the colorist getting lazy. Maria Teresa (using my husband’s aunt as a stand in) is going to give her parents a heart attack when she walks in and calls herself Tiffany.