Strong labor solidarity among comics characters really would solve a lot of problems
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Beetle Bailey, 7/11/26
The thing about the daily comics is that they’re still drawn as if the black and white version is canonical, even though probably most people who read them now see them online, in color. That means that if you want your imagined audience to know that Sgt. Luggs really dolled herself up for this date only to be humiliated by Sarge’s combo gluttony/cheapness, you have to draw her lipstick in black, even though you’ll give online readers the impression that she’s “gone goth” in an attempt to distract Sarge from his pathological need for food (it didn’t work).
Hi and Lois, 7/11/26
Genuinely love that Lois just had the Flagston home inkjet printer spit “NO JUNK FOOD” in 490 point font out and handed it to Hi on his way to the supermarket. I assume he doesn’t even have a list beyond this. “Just follow your instincts and then buy the opposite,” she said.
Crankshaft, 7/11/26
Real talk: I have zero idea who these people are supposed to be. Is it Mopey Pete and Mindy, and he’s put on a lot of weight in the last year and she’s caught whatever he has that causes the visible eyebags? Or are they day players, hired because everyone in the regular cast steadfastly refused to deliver the line “I’m glad we went with Harry to that abandoned amusement park today”?
48 replies to “Strong labor solidarity among comics characters really would solve a lot of problems”
Mary Worth Mashup: How about an added missing panel?
Judge Parker Mashup: I think we all can agree with this modification.
Pluggers Mashup: I didn’t like the original caption.
MW: I know that Mary or Dawn or someone will unknowingly prevent Tommy’s relapse, but I really, truly, stupidly believed this was going to be a fake out. Why did I ever have faith in Moy?
CS: So they buried him alive in the same place as his father, right?
Hi and Lois:
“Mr. Flagston, I have the exact same cranial features as you. Am I your illegitimate progeny?”
Good to see that Hi and Lois strictly observes the distinction between chips and Pringles.
B. Bailey: I assume the waiter’s speech balloon is hiding the small black dot in the first panel that shows the group of diners in the background who are hurtling through the void towards our heroes in the second panel.
BB: I love how this restaurant seems to keep their tables a good 40 feet from each other to cater to that ‘Sarge’ demographic, i.e. gluttonous pigs who are still disgusted by the sight of their own kind eating.
H&L: Hi looks really crestfallen in that second panel. Is it possible he came all the way to the grocery store without reading the note?
CSh: Jesus, this reads like the most boring episode of Scooby-Doo ever written.
@Baja Gaijin
Great as always.
S4th: ‘Okay, listen… do you want out of this stupid ‘unstuck in time’ storyline or don’t you?’
MW: ‘I’ll light this up at home, and then I’ll ‘light up’ Wilbur Weston! With the amount of grease in his body he’ll burn for a LONG time!!
MW: Assuming this does end with a fire, those Spanish-speaking birds are going to save the day again, aren’t they?
JP: Hey, don’t look at us, Ronnie! You could have said you were busy!
Hi and Lois: “The snack aisle is off-limits? But those are our products with the highest price markup, and you’re our the only customer who showed up today. If you start eating carrots and flank steak, we’ll be out of business in weeks!”
Crankshaft: “I’m glad we went with Harry to that abandoned amusement park today.” “Yes, it’s good that we could help him bring some closure to his relationship with his father. Who knew that old Scooby-Doo plot lines were so psychologically satisfying?”
Pluggers: Bug spray is “plugger cologne” — because when other people breathe it in, it makes them just woozy enough to consider you a potential romantic prospect.
Crankshaft:
“I’m glad we went with Harry to that abandoned amusement park today. Those decaying structures, a striking and jarring antithesis to the carefree fun and froth they once brought, formed a fitting depressing ending to this melancholic story arc — a sort of Ozymandias of carnivals. They were a grim reminder of what Harriet Martineau once aptly described as ‘the fugacious nature of life and time.’ ”
“Huh?”
CS: Narration box refuses to add after final sentence: “Spits into coffee cup”. Crank’s loose dentures or not, the box has its standards.
Brewster Rocket: In the live-action film, Cliff will be played by Rich Evans.
Dustin: That last panel is truly unsettling. I think their eyes mean they’ve been taken over by alien mind parasites.
H&L: But the “Snacks on Sale” sign is BIGGER and uses TWO colors! Hi doesn’t stand a chance against that diabolically clever advertising.
MW: I don’t want to be an insensitive jerk, but Tommy is really starting to harsh my mellow.
GT: I hope it’s REALLY embarrassing.
Beetle Bailey:
“Hey, Chef Boyardee — what happened to your hat?”
Beetle Bailey : “A pizza? I thought I was describing a Bruschetta!”
************
Crankshaft : Okay, if THIS is the note “In the Name of the Father” ends on (a clumsy recap of things the reader understood on his own punctuated by a terrible malaprop that accidentally implies the situation has worsened rather than resolved), I swear…
My one hope is that this storyline can’t end until the narrator who opened it comes back, but on the other hand, well, what Tom Servo says.
**********
Flash Gordon : “What about the Trial?” “I’m the Queen, I can do whatever I like. Like interrupting this duel for a prolonged ‘MADLY WEEPING IN GRIEF’ pause, and hoping you’re sporting enough to honor it.” “Oh, like a hydration pause. Cool, take your time.”
**********
Sally Forth : “Nah, I’m thinking this is more of a ‘Kindly old figure who tragically died from your childhood turns out to be your time-displaced future self’. You know, like in 12 Monkeys.”
CS Cat-eye-glasses has been pretty clearly drawn with a bosom earlier in the week, so either Mopey Pete has put on some impressive moobs, or more likely these are choir member characters we’re supposed to remember because writing walls of text for an incoherent timeline is far more important than signalling characters.
CShaft: I call bullshit, no one has ever been glad to do anything with Harry Dinkle.
GT “So funny thing! Few months ago, Gil Thorp comes over to our school, says he wants some help with his wedding plans to ensure he gets a day with his kids but without his Ex, so he’s going to formally bow out of Coach Of The Year this year rather than being the usual shoe-in for the Nth year, give the rest of us a chance. Needs a witness from a rival school when he signs the forms, some technicality…”
@Baja Gaijin: especially liking the Judge Parker. You’ve *done* this before Sophie, and ended up with death threats!
CS: Thoae are supposed to be members of Dinkle’s choir, but they’re drawn much too young. They don’t look anything at all like who they’re supposed to be.
BB: Here’s how to demonstrate you have zero faith in your joke: immediately have an ancillary character explain it.
H&L: Triumph and tragedy for Hi Flagston today. For a brief, shining moment, he gets to revel in the fact that there’s a person willing refer to him as “Mr. Flagston.” You know, out of respect. Then he remembers that his own wife considers him an irresponsible idiot, and he crashes back down to earth.
‘shaft: Ed’s a professional. He knows that this is supposed to be a “funny” strip, but it’s gotten bogged down in sentimentality and sadness lately. So it’s time to start mixing some metaphors, baby! And mix them he does.
MW: The clearest evidence of Tommy being a FORMER-FELON LOSER isn’t the dope he just bought, it’s the generic 40 year old junker that he’s driving.
Phantom/RMMD: “Evil has come to free Chatu!” “Hi, Uncle Chatty!”
H&L – Hi’s short-term memory issues are on full display here. He’s very excited to tell Jimmy that he’s doing the grocery shopping under strict orders, only to suddenly remember what those orders are.
H&L —
In the daytime Hi’s Mr. Natural, just as healthy as he can be.
But at night he’s a junk food junkie, the Lord have pity on he.
Hi and Lois:
Look, I know legacy comic strips tend to wallow in nostalgia, but this is going too far. You’re telling us that in the Year of Our Lord 2026 the Flagstons go grocery shopping at a place where the owner-operator is standing behind the counter with his mechanical cash register and making conversation, and he even knows who Hi is by name even though according to the strip itself he rarely goes there? Like it’s the fucking 1920s or some shit? Absurd! They barely even had junk food back then, at least by modern standards! Extruded flavored corn puffs were but a gleam in a food scientist’s eye!
MW – I’m concerned about Tommy’s low self-esteem with the use of “former.” Don’t sell yourself short, dude. You’re still a felon and a loser.
Crankshaft:
Judging by their reactions to Ed’s mixed metaphor I’m pretty sure these are unfamiliar rather than established characters—anyone who’s ever encountered Crankshaft, or indeed any of the Funkyverse cast we know and loathe, would have long since become inured to execrable sub-wordplay, and would react not with wide-eyed shock but instead the characteristic smirk which functions as a shibboleth by which they recognize their sad little in-group.
9CL: There is absolutely no scenario where I would not be disturbed by the word “probing”. Associating it with Amos just turns it up a notch. Why is the far twin shrinking from frame to frame?
Hi’s frown turns to a smirk when he realizes that pastries, ice cream, and beer technically aren’t “junk food.”
Is the dark-haired person in Crankshaft male, female, gender-fluid, gender neutral, or what? I’m fine with any of those choices, but dwelling on this is a nice distraction from this storyline.
Wary Morth:
Spoiler alert:
Just as Tommy is about to smoke/snort/ingest/inject whatever this is, there’s a knock at the door. Why, it’s Whisky, come back from Florida all ready to throw herself into Tommy’s arms! Tommy rubs his eyes disbelievingly. Oh, wait, no, it’s Mary with a heaped plate of muffins.
Tommy slams the door and dives for the drugs. He now needs them desperately.
Wrecks Moregone:
Yes, shout louder about all your scams. There are still a couple of people in the whole prison complex who haven’t heard you.
___________________________________________
“We made a whole $50 today, that’s $49 more than you made from all your scams……put together.”
___________________________________________
“For example, we’re not even sisters, let alone twins! We scammed even you into thinking that! We’re just a couple of juvenile delinquents who were cellmates at juvenile prison and decided we looked alike enough to pretend to be!”
Murky Tail:
I suppose that gorilla was reading the strip and Jules’ “humour”.
At least Hi is shopping like in a recognizable environment, unlike Snorkel and Lugg, who are dining in a featureless void.
MW: Ï’ll smoke these at home because smoking ’em while driving would be irresponsible. Although if I were, that would go a long way towards explaining why I’m driving my K-car on the wrong side of the road.
Classical Pluggers smell like Retsina. Neo-classical Pluggers smell like diethyl-meta-toluamide.
Two great jokes that go great together:
@matt w: CS: So they buried him alive in the same place as his father, right?
@nescio: CShaft: I call bullshit, no one has ever been glad to do anything with Harry Dinkle.
MW: Really, though, isn’t it reassuring that Tommy had to drive to get to Crime Alley? It shows it’s nowhere near the nice parts of Santa Royale, like Charterstone.
Shaft – “It was a good idea to take Harry to that abandoned amusement park yesterday. Not only was it a remote, isolated place to off the old prick, it also was a great setting to make a mini-horror movie out of it that we can run on YouTube. Win-win!”
Beetle Bailey: Is it just me, or is that other table really far away? I guess they wanted to seat the other patrons outside of Sarge’s splash zone.
Beetle – If you don’t want Sarge to try to bum a pizza off you, don’t look so much like the chef on the pizza box.
Hi and Lois – “I understand, Mr. Flagston. Can I interest you in a nice antique cash register?”
Don Abundio, translated:
“What a fine satisfaction there must be in simple honest toil…”
“… knowing at the end of the day that you’ve made one small corner of the world a brighter place”
“No tip”
“Real talk: I have zero idea who these people are supposed to be.”
The blond woman in today’s strip is named Lois and the brunette who’s wearing glasses is named Pat
@cheech wizard: “An old barn? All the nice shows in town and you take a girl to an old barn?” — Groucho Marx, Monkey Business (1931)
@Hibbleton: True pluggers have never moved on from the original Skin So Soft.
C’shaft: I don’t blame Josh for not recognizing the members of the St. Spires Choir; the blonde looks like every other woman under 40 in this strip and both of them just serve as props for Harry’s and/or Crankshaft’s antics. Apart from Lilian, when was the last time Batiuk wrote any female character doing anything other than reacting to what a man was saying? When Lisa died?