The past, the future, etc.
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Beetle Bailey, 10/19/25
When Yuri Gagarin made the first human spaceflight, there were concerns that the experimental capsule he rode into space in would land too roughly for him to survive, so he actually ejected from the craft about four miles up and parachuted to the ground. He landed on a collective farm and, still wearing his space suit and helmet, almost caused a local woman and her granddaughter to panic, but he told them “Don’t be afraid, I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space — and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!” Beetle, unfortunately, will receive no heroic welcome, just an all-American suspicious invocation of property rights.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/19/25
I do enjoy the different facial expressions on the sheriff and the judge in the final panel. The judge, who still believes that he’s operating within an impartial system of justice, an objective institution that stands above petty squabbles, looks put out by Snuffy’s jibe. But Sheriff Tait, who holds elected office — indeed, as far as we know he’s the only elected official the residents of Hootin’ Holler ever interact with — he gives our boy Snuffy a sly smile. He knows what Snuffy’s talking about! He knows all too well!
Mary Worth, 10/19/25
Hey, do you ever worry about our direction as a country, and, frankly, as a species? Well, have faith: in New York City, there’s a thirteen-year-old who can sort of see the future and talk to dogs with her mind, in very specific circumstances. I think we can all agree that she’s the answer to all our problems. Nothing more to worry about, let’s move on to the next story and find out what’s up with [spins giant wheel] Tommy, like is he on drugs again or what.
42 replies to “The past, the future, etc.”
MW: “You’re a remarkable girl, Olive. Unlike all the dullards I’m surrounded by here. Hey, you! [in the third panel] Go stand in the corner.”
Slylock Fox-Cassandra Cat is innocent. She’s been doing a livestream of her OnlyFans. Max has proof.
RMMD-Augie becomes the author of a series of schlock suspense books which are primarily sold in airport gift shops.
MW-Olive’s plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors.
MW-Olive’s leaving on a jet plane. Hope she won’t be back again.
RMMD: how does Mrs Jordan know it’s a suspense nove?l. Dipshit Augie wouldn’t even tell Summer what it’s about.
FC: Sure, Jesus healed the blind but I’d still take Jeffy to a hospital.
BG and SS:
Snuffy Smith Goes to Washington.
Beetle Bailey: If you were a farmer trying to survive with just two small sheep — and a lot of hard ground that you’ve spray-painted green in an attempt to convince potential buyers that it’s grazing land — you’d be wary of strangers, too!
Mary Worth: Oh, Mary, you’ve really outdone yourself here — lecturing at someone with your thoughts, when you know she’s the only person who can hear them! Olive, meanwhile, is turning up her noise-canceling headphones on the plane, but nothing can cancel the cacophony of a long-winded lady’s psychic signals. If nothing else helps, she’ll have to try to drown them out with some of that Zeppelin and Creedence and Stones music, which all the Boomers at Charterstone kept trying to convince her is better than Taylor.
Blondie: I don’t know what’s worse, that they killed off Dagwood or that they made Daisy watch.
MW:
“Ah, there she goes…and she’s off! And that’s the ‘plane’ truth!”
MW: If they hadn’t used the stupid dog-telepathy thing, and Olive had instead just done some kind and decent act — say, on a visit to the vet clinic, she comforted a younger child whose dog had died — Mary’s “hope for the future” speech could have worked.
As it is, yeah, it sounds like in ten years it’s going to be a small cult of people wearing dog collars and obeying Olive’s commands. And we’ve already got plenty of those.
@Professor Well Actually: I think Mrs. Jordan is being sarcastic, as the “suspense” is whether this novel even exists.
MW:
“Of course, there are 153 passengets and members of the crew on that flight who don’t exhibit those abilities, so I’m probably getting a little ahead of myself!”
BB: Yes, you CAN buy a shepherd’s crook online. These are wonderful times we live in.
H&L: There is no future, Hi. You’ve meddled with time, and there’s only an eternal now.
MW: Why, Mary? Why did you go to such lengths to keep Olive from encountering Wilbur? You stuck her up in a tree, for God’s sake! What were you afraid of finding out?
This week’s Mary Worth quote is very busted. This doesn’t even land on Ralph Abernathy’s wikiquote as a disputed attribution, it was already kicking around in various churchy sources in the 1950s as a chestnut, it was in Stuart Hamblen’s 1952 gospel hymn “Known Only To Him,” and the earliest source I can find is Cyrus the Persian (1941 or 1944) by Sherman A. Nagel: “Faith says, I may not know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future” (p. 93). Abernathy was 15 or 18 at the time, depending on the date.
Also though the quote seems like it’s supposed to be about The Children, it’s really about Jesus, in case anyone was still wondering about whether Mary and Olive are going to start a messianic quote. At least it’s not attributed to John C. Calhoun.
BB:
“Can’t you read the sign?”
“No. And in context, I’m sheepish about it! So to speak.”
JP:
Charlotte shit-talking Neddy everyday is a comic I can really enjoy.
Even the sheep….dog….things are mad at Beetle! He violated the property rights of the man who regularly strips them of all their hair, and someday will kill and eat them! THIS SHALL NOT PASS.
Mary takes someone to the airport and then stays so she can watch the plane take off, that checks. We know she doesn’t have anything better to do, for sure.
It’s Sunday and time for JUNGLE JIM!
Today… an army of half-starved rats.
MW: Ah, THERE she goes…and she’s OFF! She’s at the back of the field…but now she’s gaining…she’s coming around the clubhouse turn…!
MW – Talk her up all you want, Mary. We all know that once Olive gets to high school, she’s going to go all Carrie on her classmates.
MW: Christ, is Olive Karen Moy’s real-life niece or something? I’ve never seen a comic strip spend so much time praising a walk-on character for nothing in particular.
CS: Hey Crankshaft, didn’t you call a game-winning play for a CFL team just a few weeks ago? Maybe you need to wander onto the Browns’ sideline. Since you’re so much better at football than all these highly-paid professionals.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Don’t overthink it. It’s glurge targeted at Boomers and older Gen-Xers.
MW:
“The Delta between popular perception of our teens and the reality is incredible…they’re so full of Spirit! Each day is a new Frontier for them! If they are United in their determination, it will make us all proud to be an American!”
@Hibbleton: Charlotte then goes to complain about Neddy on the web. “Some Bit**”
BB: The old-timey shepherd’s crook, and the gnomish looking hat on the guy, already looks like Beetle landed in a better fantasy realm than what we got with Luann.
BB: fun fact: the Soviets kept the fact that Gagarin bailed out of Vostok 1 a secret for a long time, because they wanted to claim the record for the fastest flight around the world. The rules said you had to take off and land in your aircraft. Admitting he bailed out would cost him a place in the record books.
SFx: I, for one, am extremely disappointed in Casandra Cat’s choices in nightwear.
6Chx: I love it when Bianca gets the Sunday spot. It really lets her stretch out and show us her talent.
Pluggers are incompetent at even the smallest tasks. And proud of it.
DT: So Faust has sufficient evidence to blackmail LaKoyle into working for him? Didn’t DT and the MCU do a thorough investigation talking with people, gathering physical evidence and such? Did the Chief District Attorney in the state aka the Attorney General take a bribe to look the other way? OK – it is neo-Chicago afterall, but does Faust think it is a good ideal to let LaKoyle continue to do research on her zap gun and magic gel that can stored the energy of a small sun? Right, that will turn out well when she zaps her way out of her lab and zaps him.
MW: Final Destination ending please!
RMMD: meanwhile the pateints are all stacked up. Some leave in disgust and others simply plop down on the floor while listening to the conversation about Augie’s book.
JP I’m not sure whether the artist has less experience with kids (“for the eleventh time, pick. up. the. books. – what books? I don’t see any books! – the ones you just _stepped_over_ to avoid kicking them!”) or with what untidiness looks like (because it sure isn’t just *one* meal’s worth of dishes left out next to a single shopping bag…).
BGSS: Poor, desperate people sometimes deliberately commit crimes and get caught, just for the security of prison, its shelter and regular meals. This strip is too real, can’t we go back to the jokes about moonshining and chicken rustling?
MW: Olive appears to be returning to New York in a B52 bomber, foreshadowing her psychic powers flourishing into an weapon of mass destruction. The only question is will her telekinetic apocalypse be more like Akira or Watchmen?
BB – Consarn ICE raids….
BG&SS – Antifa radicals! Off to Alligator Alcatraz for you!! And no pizza there!!!
MW – Ah – Olive is off to her Final Destination! A happy ending for all….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
B. Bailey: The golden staff is the giveaway that Beetle has just ruined Halftrack’s cosplaying weekend.
Looking forward to seeing how the New Gospel Of Mary And Olive retells The Miracle Of The Dachshund.
DT: In a very dark conclusion, Tess LaKoyle is sold into Science Lab slavery for Diet Smith Industries. Roberta McAssistant has been sent to a small farm upstate to avoid distractions. Tess is forced to room with a journalist who ran away from wartime service and an airhead who drowned her illegitimate baby. To top every thing off, Dr. Faust is illiterate and makes her read aloud every day from the complete works of Charles Dickens.
“No trespassing!” sign confusingly placed in the middle of the farmer’s property? Check. Farmer who looks like a shepherd who looks like a bearded Ivan Král? Yep. Sheep that look like dogs with sort-of poodle cuts? Them too. Joke that’s so lame you have to wonder if it’s a joke at all? Ayep. Congratulations, Beetle Bailey creative team! If the goal was to vex and confuse your audience, you’ve won Sunday!
MW: Today’s strip is brought to you by Allstate, the good hands people!
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: So I walk into a guy’s room the other day, and he’s watching Fox News. “Oh, Pres. Trump is on,” I remark, hastily adding “Don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
“I think he’s a good president,” he says, looking right at me. “Don’t you?”
Well shit, now I’ve got to think fast, can’t get into a partisan discussion. “Wait a second, didn’t you tell me the other day all politicians were crooks?”
“Yeah, but he’s the best of them. He’s the chief crook!”
“Can’t argue with that.”
MW: (narrator voice) But she isn’t, and we aren’t. Next in Mary Worth: Tommy learns about crypto, Dawn falls for a young balloonist, and Wilbur Weston is elected to congress.
I’d like to know exactly what sort of airplane Olive is flying away on which has barely swept-back wings and the engine nacelles on top of those wings. It’s some experimental bomber from WWII unearthed and restored to carry her off to her new volcano secret lair, right?
9CL: Edda’s playing with her pussy cat again.
MW:
“Dear girl, I forgot to take you to karaoke while you were here. I wanted to sing a song about Max and Greta. Perhaps you’ll hear it if I shout it at the plane!
“Greta’s quizzical, almost metaphysical
Sighin’ in her home
Late nights all alone with the stressed two, oh, oh, oh, on
Maxwell Wynter-Lourd, majoring in being bored
Calls her on the phone
“Can I take you out for a richer bo-o-o-one?”
But as she’s getting ready to go
A bark comes at the door
Bang, bang, Maxwell’s stilted yammer
Came down upon her head
Bang, bang, Maxwell’s stilted yammer
Made sure that he was fed
Back in drool again, Maxwell plays a hooligan
Greta gets annoyed
Working to avoid an unpleasant sce-e-e-ene
She tells Max, “You stay!” when her sass has gone astray
So he waits behind
Biting fifty times, “I must now eat cro-o-o-ow”
But when she turns her back on the boy
He creeps up from behind
Bang, bang, Maxwell’s stilted yammer
Comes down upon her head
Bang, bang, Maxwell’s stilted yammer
Makes sure that he is fed
CK 31 says, “We got a nerdy one”
Max, well, stands alone
Taking ceremonial pictures, oh, oh, oh, oh
Schmos with allergies screaming from the gallery
Say he must go free (Max, well, must go free)
A mudge does not agree, and he tells him so-o-o-o
But as the words are leaving his lips
A noise comes from behind
Bang, bang, Max’s stilted yammer
Comes down upon his head
Bang, bang, Max’s stilted yammer
Makes sure that he is fed
Whoa, oh, oh, oh
Doo-doo, doo-doo, do
(Stilted yammer)
Pint, ping!
A smug mildly clairvoyant canine telepath who is constantly getting praise heaped on her by an elderly woman on the other side of the country? We are in good hands indeed.
***
As someone who has skydived (for realsies, twice, and I appreciate the opportunity to bring this up) the utter lack of concern Sarge has for Beetle’s safety was shocking to the core until I remembered that he has broken every bone and damaged every organ in the private’s body on multiple occasions and the dude keeps bouncing back, more or less, so Snorkle has no reason to believe that the main parachute failing in any way would be a death sentence for the private. The years of concussions would also help explain how Bailey is able to sleep standing up.