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Six Chix, 4/18/24

I’ll freely admit that I find floating Poseidon here very charming, with his cheery attitude and his whole … diaper? situation and a single eye perched right on his dick, perhaps in loving memory of his son Polyphemus, cut down in his prime by Odysseus. Anyway, much as it pains me to be pedantic (haha, just kidding, I love pedantry more than I love my own family), Poseidon is specifically the god of the sea, along with earthquakes and, uh, horses, so the water in that glass is very salty and won’t help this poor woman hydrate at all. The guy you’re looking for is Achelous, the river god who is the father of all the freshwater springs.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/18/24

Insurance exists as a risk-pooling technique, and from the perspective of the insurer, the point is to exclude riskier customers from the pool as much as possible, or at least to price that risk appropriately. Normally you’d do this via actuarial science, but if you had the power to scry into the future, you would obviously just exclude future disaster victims from your insurance plan altogether rather than marketing to them. Clearly Hagar is being scammed here, possibly because he already used this lady’s one true crystal ball in battle, and she needs to make up the revenue somehow.

Gearhead Gertie, 4/18/24

Lotta questions about what today’s Gearhead Gertie tells us about this strip’s universe. Are we meant to understand that Gertie is fielding questions at, like, a press conference or something, because her monomania has made her something of a local celebrity? Or is she just breaking the fourth wall and addressing us readers personally? Also, would an internal combustion engine really improve blender performance in any noticeable way? Or is she willing to destroy appliance after appliance just to make a point?

Mary Worth, 4/18/24

All right, fine, I’ve been complaining about yet another Wilbur storyline, but … I gotta give it up for panel two here, where Wilbur’s ex and her new boytoy natter on about how, thanks to their fitness regimen, they’re only getting sexier, while Wilbur stares them in numb silence. I’m hooked! They got me! They always get me!

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Blondie, 4/17/24

Most Blondie strips aren’t exactly Shakespeare, but there’s usually … a recognizable jokes? A punchline? People are way too ready to say this, but today’s strip — which is just “Wow, there’s an app for everything!” “Too bad there isn’t an app for loading the dishes!” “There should be an app for loading the dishes, the thing I’m doing right now!” — is so disjointed and nonsensical that it almost feels like AI wrote it. Rather than just harboring such dark suspicions, I decided to go to the source: ChatGPT itself.

On one hnad, it honestly brings me no pleasure to report that this joke is actually substantially better than the one that made it into newspapers (though it does require you to know that “stack overflow” is a kind of error that computer programs sometimes have). On the other, it at least reassures me that AI was not in fact used to make today’s strip, because if it had been, it would’ve been funnier.

Gasoline Alley, 4/17/24

Oh, God, wait, is a Gasoline Alley character in-universe actually consulting AI? Well, I already have that tab open, might as well just see what I get —

I think we can agree that, while “Energy Avenue” isn’t the same as “Electric Acres,” it’s in the same ballpark. And I’m obviously not paying for access to the high-test version of ChatGPT, so I think it’s pretty clear that Assistant Mayor Imeswine has gotten himself ripped off.

Crock, 4/17/24

You ever get depressed about the state of technology, folks? You ever long for the days when you and a friend were looking through the windows of a store that sold computers, and your friend asked you if you “surf the web often,” and you tell her you visited one website exactly one time? And then it devolves into some good-natured (?) ribbing about how your husband sucks. Those were simpler days, people, simpler days.

Rhymes With Orange, 4/17/24

You ever think about whether after we die, we become diaphanous ghosts with the same topology as a jellyfish, with an interior “pocket” that has only one entrance, and that other souls can use you like a sack to envelop their own spectral form, and you and them are thus intermingled and tumbling through the air, invisible to the living, forever? You wouldn’t talk to an AI about this. They’re too young, too innocent. They know nothing of death, and we should keep it that way.

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Hi and Lois, 4/16/24

Lois’s book group used to be the fun kind, where she and her friends would use the vague excuse of literary pretension to get extremely wine drunk on a weeknight. But some killjoy who “wants to actually talk about the book” or “is feeling her relationship with alcohol slipping out of control” has apparently put a stop to that, so now the ladies have to take truly dire steps to entertain one another, like all sitting around in silence while listening to a voice memo of Hi awkwardly stumbling through some vaguely offensive joke Thirsty told at work, in violation of several provisions in the HR handbook.

Beetle Bailey, 4/16/24

Another way you can tell Beetle isn’t asleep is because he’s half raising his arms into the air, which I guess is supposed to represent some kind of meditative hand mudra but really looks more like he’s doing a Rodney Dangerfield-style “My wife doesn’t love me!” stand-up routine.

Mary Worth, 4/16/24

Since Wilbur has already run into Estelle, I guess his next predictably awkward predicament is running into Iris, though I feel like he sees her often enough (she invited him to her wedding!) that she doesn’t merit the look of true fear in his eyes here. Could his statuesque Colombian lover/grifter Fabiana be in town, looking for one more chance (to steal his money)? Let’s hope!