NAS-CAR MERCH-AN-DISE (clap clap clapclapclap)
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Gearhead Gertie, 7/16/26
Really love Gertie’s gobsmacked look in the top panel here. Sure, she’s been dutifully putting away cash for retirement for her whole life. But what was it all for exactly? What exactly should she be spending her money on? There’s an open world of possibilities that’s almost too vast to get her head around! That’s why mere seconds later her brain obviously completely short-circuited and this whole narrative was replaced by NASCAR MERCHANDISE NASCAR MERCHANDISE NASCAR MERCHANDISE NASCAR MERCHANDISE NASCAR MERCHANDISE NASCAR MERCHANDISE NASCAR MERCHANDISE NASCAR MERCHANDISE NASCAR MERCHANDISE
Beetle Bailey, 7/16/26
I’m glad that the panels here get a thought balloon treatment showing that this whole alien encounter was all a dream of Sarge’s. Otherwise readers of the comic strip Beetle Bailey, where nothing outside of the experience of everyday real life ever happens, might be confused and terrified!
Slylock Fox, 7/16/26
Ha ha, wow! 1,728 words! That’s amazing, for a parakeet! Hey, quick question though, what the fuck is the deal with this giant dog sitting on the couch like a person and why does the lady sitting next to him have a facial expression that makes it look like she’s never seen him before in her life and only just now noticed he was there
40 replies to “NAS-CAR MERCH-AN-DISE (clap clap clapclapclap)”
CS: Eugene revealing his destination to Lillian, but not the audience, could have been a nice ending. But it’s only Thursday. We’re gonna get two or three days of Lillian and the other smirking bozos spelling it out for us, killing any ambiguity or alternative interpretations. Which should have been the entire point of not revealing it to the audience.
Slylick Fox And Comics For Kinky Kids: When Pluggers get their new meds. Lisa Douglas must have made that coffee.
GG Aside from her love of NASCAR, Gertie’s second defining trait is a deep distrust of the package delivery industry. Thats why she orders every piece of memorabilia in quadruplicate and routes each one through a different company.
BB Ah that classic Sci-Fi line “We have come to clone your leader”. You know how aliens are always trying to surrepticiously replace our leaders with alien clones but mess it up by announcing it immediately upon their arrival? Despite their mastery of intergalactic travel, they just aren’t thst bright.
SFx: This looks like a panel from the pamphletHow to come out to your family as a Furry — What Not To Do
Beetle Bailey:
“We have come to clone your leader.”
“Listen, give me a second to sculpt my mashed potatoes into the shape of a pyramid, and then I’ll be right with you!”
Luann: Ah yes, we had all forgotten the live-in manservant who apparently *wasn’t* called upon to do the shopping for the exhausted woman the world wishes would get preggers. ‘Cause wimmen be shoppin’, amirite?
JP: No Ronnie, the CIA *didn’t* stop pursuing her, and even if they had, they simply left her to the tender mercies of the Pavel Jr. mob. You need to take a job far away from here. I hear a charity organization in Norway is hiring…
Phantom: Well gee, Mr. Schmusk, if he’s such an ignoramus, why are you bothering to free him? Just have your AI go drop a nuke or something. That’ll do the job much faster and be pretty to look at from a distance too!
RMMD: Gee, Tweedleditz, the ‘Mall Inspector’ grift sounds a lot more lucrative than faking being a busker. How many scams have you got going?
S4th: Wait. Wait just a second. Are we building up to Ronan being left behind in 1986? Like, he has some heretofore unspoken connection to Sally’s ‘Aunt’? And the next thing we know everyone’s back in the present and the Forth’s are saying ‘where’s Ronan?’ and Mrs. Ted Forth simply says ‘he had important work to do back in 1986’. Then the boys with the white coats and butterfly nets show up.
Speaking of which…
CS: Eugene walks out the door. Lillian watches him from the window. At the base of the stairs Eugene simply says ‘I’m ready…’ at which point they put the straitjacket on as he dissolves into a gibbering mess and is loaded into a van labeled ‘Home for Old Men who Never Learned to Love Batton Thomas’. Fin.
Insane to think about Greg Walker passively absorbing the trope of aliens saying “take me to your leader” throughout his life, and just assuming, without ever really interrogating it, they mean for cloning, so they can have a leader too. Then putting it in the newspaper like literally anyone else was thinking the same thing! We all know that scene where aliens ask to clone your leader right? No! What are you talking about?!
GG: During the big NASCAR boom in the 00s, I knew of at least one couple that followed the show from town to town selling merch as a way to make a living in their retirement. I think they gave it up and settled down after the financial crisis, though.
Speaking of, NASCAR merch is nothing like it used to be. Fanatics has strangled the life out of it and raised prices through the roof, like they have with other sports. Bah.
Slylock Fox:
Another day, another Slylock Fox installment that looks like the set of a Fellini film.
Slylock Fox: The woman’s husband is coming out as a furry in a most surprising and dramatic way.
Slylock Fox:
Hmm. Three characters are prominent and close to one another in each of today’s panels. Does that make them a menagerie-a-trois?
Family Circus : “That means it’s time to buy a new clock.” Why is the strip asking its readers to fill in the (old, too well-known) punchline today?
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Gearhead Gertie : Damn, for a second I thought those were disguised law enforcement vans, and that Gearhead Gertie was finally getting
killed in a hail of gunfirearrested, like she deserves.************
Luann : …I think that “if you give them an opening, people will suddenly start talking about sex in an incredibly explicit and gross way, even in a public setting” is less of an “everyone” problem, and more of a “your fanbase in general, and the gocomics commenters in particular”, Evansii.
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Slylock Fox : EXTRA DIFFERENCE : In the panel on the right, the woman is shocked because that dog used to be small size a second ago. In the panel on the left, the woman is shocked because that dog used to be a human a second ago.
Gearhead Gertie:
Hmm. If the guy who’s directing your investment strategy has to have the words “FINANCIAL ADVISOR” plastered in large letters on the front of his desk for you to know what his expertise is, he’s probably not the guy that you want to be the captain of your financial ship.
RMMD: Ah yes, announce that you’re off to do crime in front of a prison guard. The twins are blessed with the same sort of criminal genius that put Rene where he is today.
The Familiar Mucus: Its Spanking Time,Jeffy!. Must admit I DO like P.J.’s death stare at the fallen little hand.
The answer to Slycock Cox is (with a decimal point inserted) almost the square root of 3. That seems like a heckuva coincidence.
MW: Mary and Wilbur discuss Dawn’s sex life. Ew.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: The answer is exactly 12 cubed (12 times 12 times 12), too.
@Lauralot: I’m sure that prison guard is thinking ‘not my job to STOP crimes, just to babysit the criminals once they get sent to jail’. If he lets them go do crimes, then they get caught and sent to jail and that means job security for him!
MW-And somehow Wilbur finds a way to worm himself into a story.
FC-“If this is a joke Mommy’s far too hungover to deal with it.”
SFox Forget the dog, today’s *real* lesson is How Not To Make A Multiple-Choice Question. 3 nice, round numbers bracketing the only one precise to the counting precision? You don’t need to know the question to see which one is sticking out like a sore thumb. You want to check if the kids know trivia? Try 183, 278, 809, 1728 – sheesh!
BB: It’s Orson Welles’ infamous radio broadcast all over again! Only at a much dopier level.
GG: The financial advisor should have been portrayed as a newbie who just graduated Business School an hour ago. There’s no other excuse for such a question to that particular client.
GT: All of the people who inexplicably hate Gil Thorp, but who are just as inexplicably at his wedding, are going to have a conniption over Beth’s micromini wedding dress. Here’s to the happy couple! Living well is the best revenge.
@Charterstoned: I’m hoping Mary yells at Wilbur for both his low opinion of Tommy and what he said to Dawn. But I doubt it will happen.
Crankshat – Did Eugene just dry hump Loathsome Lil?
Damned if I can see any difference at all in the parrot or the perch. Maybe Weber’s just messing with us.
MW If you didn’t know Dawn was an adult, the last couple of days would sound like the lead up to Wilbur doing the classic parent-too-awkward-to-speak-to-teen “leave out a Your Changing Body book and the phone number for the Dr who can prescribe contraceptives” trick
GT “I can’t believe I’m getting *married*! By tonight, I’ll be an Official Thorp Family Member – that makes me *real*, right?”
In a very special Luann, Toni cites sexual positions. She has Cowgirl but not Reverse Cowgirl, which would allow her to not have to look at Bwad. That might do the trick.
@Twinkles the Elf: I also can’t tell any difference in the cloud. Somebody got interrupted when editing the copied image?
So Gearhead Gertie gets her NASCAR™ brand fast food at Financial Advisor In The Box®?
DtM: The exact moment when Martha realizes George has been keeping a love nest apart from her. Truly menacing!
Family Circus: What time is it when the big hand is on the floor? Time to replace that clock you got with S&H Green Stamps, my friend.
Luann: This frank discussion of the facts of life are sure to come as a shock to the TruFans.
Heathcliff: Well, Heathcliff and his fish are getting probed. For Heathcliff this will probably not be entirely dissimilar to a trip to the vet, but the poor fish has no idea what’s coming.
MW: Doting father that he is, Wilbur, after tirelessly toiling to set a good example for Dawn, is concerned about Tommy’s influence. As usual, Wilbur is as self-aware as a turnip.
MW: Mary will ask Dr. Jeff to intervene. After all, he can advise Tommy as both an older man and a medical professional. Dr. Jeff will take Tommy out for a ride on the Compensation and find the right moment to advise Tommy to keep his rocket in his pocket.
As a NASCAR fan, Gearhead Gertie isn’t comfortable unless she’s surrounded by vehicles emblazoned with brand names.
Gearhead Gertie:
I’m not a NASCAR fan, so when I heard about the tragically early death of NASCAR legend Kyle Busch a couple months ago, my initial reaction (after “that’s sad, he was so young”) was “How is Gearhead Gertie going to take this?” It’s good to learn from today’s installment that the fire of her love for NASCAR remains undimmed, but we still don’t know exactly how she reacted to the news, unless her shell-shocked expression in panel one is her still trying to process the tragedy weeks later. Since an untimely death always adds romance and mystique to a person’s career, I considered the possibility that, after her initial shock and dismay, she might broaden her current worship of Dale Earnhardt to include Busch, but eventually I decided this was unlikely since whereas the former died in a spectacular on-track accident, Busch fell victim to pneumonia, which is unlikely to impress a thrill-seeker like Gertie. Still, while Busch probably hasn’t earned deification, surely some of that merchandise she’s ordered can be used for a small shrine to a newly-canonized Saint Kyle in Gertie’s Apostolic Church of the Holy Car #3.
Beetle Bailey: Did…did Sarge just send Beetle to get probed? I’m pretty sure that’s illegal in Pete Hegseth’s military.
@Twinkles the Elf, @CanuckDownSouth: Parrot’s tail feather coloring; perch is longer (closer to the couch); cloud is further down. I do think Weber’s “spot the diffs” are harder than the ones I remember from when I was a kid, and I don’t think that’s the senility talking.
@Charterstoned: I can totally see Moy taking it in that direction, because I’m remembering Mary’s resolution of the Harv Hart story — “He didn’t need romantic or erotic love, just his family.”
Also Beetle Bailey: That’s “We have come to clone your leader cha-cha-cha,” dammit.
@Twinkles the Elf: Damned if I can see any difference at all in the parrot or the perch.
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The Perch in the second panel is longer and skinnier towards the woman, The Parrot is horny for hot dog on woman action in the second panel, in the first he’s just getting off on the dog’s breath.
Beetle Bailey:
I like that the aliens in Sarge’s dream are so guileless that despite their apparently nefarious end goal, their kidnapping plan was to just go down, announce their intentions, and hope everyone goes along with it.