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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/15/24

Today’s Barney Google and Snuffy Smith punchline isn’t bad exactly. It’s a perfectly serviceable newspaper comic strip gag. There’s no shame in writing it, or in publishing it. But it’s not good, either, and it definitely doesn’t merit the insanely smug expression Jughaid is aiming at us through the fourth wall in the final panel. Settle down kid, it’s just a grape joke. Nobody’s gonna remember it tomorrow, but they are going to remember how off-putting you’re being.

Dennis the Menace, 6/15/24

Honestly, a little kid not just agreeing to look at old pictures with an old person but actually asking to do it seems like it would be an absolute dream scenario for said old person. The fact that Mr. Wilson is so firmly rejecting this offer really tells you a lot about the hell on Earth that is his Dennis-adjacent lifestyle.

Hi and Lois, 6/15/24

The project of reclaiming Thirsty’s original characterization as the neighborhood drunk has been getting grimmer for some time, and has entered a truly dark phase now, as his wife begs him to seek counseling, for her sake if not for his own, and he refuses in an incredibly dickish bait-and-switch designed to briefly give her hope that her awful home life might someday improve. What really makes this strip to me is the first panel, where you can see that Thirsty initially planned to just do a shot, but then changed his mind and decided to fill up a tumbler instead, so that he could really linger over that XXX-brand brown liquor flavor.