Real sad situations
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Beetle Bailey, 8/25/25
Comedy is, in large part, the art of subverting your audience’s expectations in ways they find pleasing. So you could see how it might make sense in theory to do a comic strip where a soldier yells “INCOMING!!” while pointing to the sky, setting up an expectation that he’s on the front lines and his position is about to get hit by an artillery barrage, only to reveal in panel two that he’s about to get pooped on by a bird, a much less life-threatening scenario. However, longtime readers know that the idea of any of Camp Swampy’s troops being deployed into combat is laughable, so the joke doesn’t really land. I will note that the second panel reinforces the punchline by showing us that Sarge and Beetle are hanging out somewhere littered with power lines, which provide ample places for birds to hang out while also being significantly easier to draw than the birds themselves.
Marvin, 8/25/25
“Marvin hates going to preschool” isn’t a strip theme I dwell on much, as it’s a less obvious target for mockery than “Marvin loves pissing himself,” but it’s just as grim in its own way. Today we learn that he hates going to school so much that he’d rather sit immobilized in his car seat indefinitely, his only company a parent who’s presumably fuming about traffic and who doesn’t feel much affection for him at the best of times, than go there. At least in this situation he can piss himself if he wants, I guess.
Dustin, 8/25/25
Wow, huge news! Dustin has finally stopped going to fern bars to find love and is joining the rest of his generation, along with the two generations before him, on the apps. He’s apparently still getting his bank statement sent to him in the mail, but, you know, baby steps.
102 replies to “Real sad situations”
Pluggers: Wouldn’t the panel work better with the caption if he was holding, I dunno, A WALLET?!!?
Slylock Fox: Waitaminute. What hidden lab? Slylock and Max are there all the time accusing Weirdly of something or thwarting Weirdly’s cunning prison cells using detritus stewn around the cell.
Since Dustin has decided to drink directly from the carton, I think we should not assist his attempts to reproduce
“Her profile says that she loves to laugh”. Then she shouldn’t be in the nationally syndicated “Dustin” comic strip!
Marvin would rather be stuck in traffic than going into a place where he can socialise with other people. So that’s how NIMBYs are made!
B. Bailey: Isn’t “The Bird,” more properly “The Old Bird” referring to the General? I don’t blame him for wanting to bomb his own troops, especially these two. A confident Sarge notes they’ll need a Blockbuster to penetrate his skull.
BB Ah, the Beetle Bailey / Shoe crossover we’d all been waiting for.
Marvin don’t those baby seats typically face backwards these days? I mean, presuming you don’t wish your baby harm…
I guess about three weeks ago a King’s Features editor showed up to work for the first time in eight years, squinted briefly at the phrase “That bird just pooped on my head,” frowned disapprovingly and pulled out a red pen.
Marvin: Shouldn’t that baby seat be rear-facing? Otherwise, Marvin could be seriously injured if…oh. Never mind, carry on.
yCurtis: In seventeen states, if they uploaded those pics of Curtis to their social media, they would be arrested for child porn.
We have a strip where someone gets pooped on, followed my Marvin, and Josh doesn’t even note the contrast. He sure has got jaded.
Sarge: After a bird poops on you, don’t look up. Does the army not teach the troops about double tap strikes?
MW: What Vicki would be saying in the non Worth-o-verse: “You could’ve drowned me, you little creep! What in the hell were you thinking? Get your weird-ass outta here!”
Naomi’s the only one who gets it. (Ed having quickly backed down on Mary’s orders.)
MuskSlylock: “Max! Go tie some party balloons to that rampaging robot.”MW: “You should HANG OUT with us sometime.” Vicki issues a vague invitation for some kind of social get-together in the murky future in a location as yet undetermined to do nothing in particular with a group that includes at least one stubbornly unwilling and overtly hostile participant. “I’d LIKE that!”
RMMD: “…But, maybe if I personally deliver a muffin basket, he’ll change his mind.”
GT: “While Coach Thorp is busy perfecting his intrepid hero pose, the entire team has fallen into a sinkhole!”
BB: A nice change for Beetle; from KP to Avian Annihilation. Because NOBODY craps on Sarge’s head.
Beetle Bailey – Having casually studied the history of intelligence agencies’ crazy research in the Cold War, and the ways in which US troops were often unwittingly used, it wouldn’t surprise me that black ops was still using Camp Swampy as testing grounds for various experiments.
Officially the “bird bomb” experiment is supposed to train birds to target enemies of America in other nations with biological agents via feces, though in practice the CIA is just using this as a live-action video game to see how often they can hit their least favorite Camp Swampy characters.
Marvin – Marvin likes anything that prevents him from having to mature or advance as a person – preschool, potty training, coming up with new jokes for his strip.
Dustin – I am sending his date a picture of how Dustin drinks orange juice straight from the carton in a disturbing way.
Beetle Bailey: For some reason, the art today seems particularly two-dimensional. It reminds me of the old Flannelgraphs Sunday School teachers used to use to break down complex Bible stories into simplified visual narratives. Whole lot of kids walking away confused and questioning their belief in God after reading Beetle Bailey today, is what I’m saying.
@pugfuggly: @Pozzo: Rear-facing is only possible for small enough babies / toddlers. Laws typically require until age 1, but most seats have a limit to about age 2 – and each has an actual height and weight limit that’s usually reached at 2, 2.5 years – any bigger load and the seat could fail entirely in a crash. With Marvin in preschool (3+), only the fanciest and most expensive car seats could safely be used rear-facing, and I doubt his parents care enough to buy that!
Dustin: “See, her profile pic shows her with a big ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ sticker on her wall, and I guess some artwork by her grandchildren too?”
Pluggers: You’re a plugger if you forgot you used the exact same joke about “Facebook” last week.
Marvin: Joke’s on Marvin: his car seat isn’t anchored to the seat behind him, and also it’s clearly a sofa where he’s been deposited for quiet/neglect time.
Beetle Bailey: Why’s Beetle crouching in terror in the second panel?
Oh. It’s the decades of unpredictable physical abuse. Never mind.
FC and Beetle Bailey: Beetle will be yelling “Incoming!” when he sees Billy Circus on his flying skateboard!!
Dustin: Tell your date that you had tried finding a date at a church–and all the date prospects (who were older than Dustin’s grandmother) turned him down.
JP: Wow, the CIA even has a regional HQ in Cavelton and is detaining American judges on US soil now? Where is Antifa when we need them?
DT: So the major crime unit saved the two businesses to last?
MW: Hip Hip Hooray for Olive! Hip Hip Hooray!
JP: Are they in Washington DC or is that another CIA HQ?
RMMD: No means no, Cody!
Slylock: Wouldn’t be easier to use some of the party supply store supplies like glitter glue or silly string or paint? This is the moment where Max quits “No, NO WAY, am I crawling up to that killer bot to tie a balloon.”
BB — Um, birds aren’t real.
Or did we stop doing that?
Dusty — You found a date online–find some jokes there too! It can’t be more difficult. . . .
MW – Vicki and her posse are confident of taking first prize by inviting Olive to a nerd party.
“He’s apparently still getting his bank statement sent to him in the mail, but, you know, baby steps.”
In fairness to Dustin, which is a phrase for which I deeply apologize, he could be getting it inside some banking app on his phone, which he could then show to his date.
Dustin Dudes, you’re creating a comic strip in 2025. You sure you want to be joking about pathetic bank statements?
Dustin: Well, with her usual snark and looks of dead-eyed longing, Megan is trying to keep her brother for herself. Dusti should not be drinking milk out of the cart–he should be drinking Folgers.
Marvin: Shouldn’t the focus be on whichever of Marvin’s parents realizes because of traffic they won’t be able to dump the little package of joy at preschool before he drops his own package?
“Her profile says she loves to lash! I’m thinking she meant laugh, and, you know, autocorrect.”
Dustin: Either Dustin hasn’t figured out by now that asking his sister for assistance or advice is just an open invitation for her to insult him (in which case he’s beyond help), or this is some twisted form of humiliation play for him (in which case the rest of us did not agree to participate in your kink, dude).
Slylock Fox-Slylock will be doing nothing. It will be Max risking his life to tie balloons to the robot.
RMMD-“So that’s a no on coming over for Christmas then?”
MW-As somebody somewhere yesterday pointed out one of the former mean girls went from ambiguously brown to snow white.
FC-“How long do you think PJ is going to keep rolling like that?”
Dustin-“Men pay me to go out on dates with them,” Meg says.
Either the perspective was too much work to figure out in a daily gag strip or Sarge and Beetle were subjected to gigantification experiments by the army, and I can’t see a cartoonist phoning it in.
MW: If Moy can drag out an inane phone conversation for most of the week, then she can drag out Olive getting her undeserved accolades from Little Orphan Knockoff and Cafe Latte (Spicy Latina has been whitewashed with the brush of friendship).
RMMD: One brother went on to become a moderately successful roots country singer. The other went on to become a notorious outlaw landscaper. They next meet on the gallows where Cody, moonlighting as an executioner, places the noose around his brother’s neck. “I should not have rejected you all those years ago!!” bawls Jonah.
Wikipedia entry for Truck’s biggest hit: My brother, My foe [citation needed]
BB: They can’t show birds in this comic strip! What do you think this is?!? Shoe?!?
Marvin: He does look like he’s shit himself.
Dustin: Today I learned Dustin has a proboscis. That’s the only way he can drink that orange juice(?) as drawn.
C’shaft: “You know, our only grandson, Mitch? Whose name, Mitch, I’m sure you know, and whom you could infer I was talking about by just saying ‘our grandson’ but who hasn’t appeared in the strip in a long time so the audience might have forgotten he exists altogether so I feel it’s important to give his name, Mitch, in order to bring everyone up to speed on the fact that we have a grandson and his name is Mitch? That grandson, Mitch?”
Also, you cannot convince me that Crankshaft doesn’t look forward to another year of tormenting children. This is his Christmas morning.
GT: From the look of panel one, I’m guessing what he has in store is some kind of acrobatic routine.
JP: “I was just trying to be polite–either that or I was trying to issue a veiled threat disguised as politeness. Either way the implications have gone over your thick skull, so let’s move on.
MW: Naomi’s Kermit-scrunch face is a perfect depiction of my reaction to this nonsense.
@Liam: Yeah, there’s some unfortunate implications going on here whether or not it was intentional or just the colorist getting lazy. Maria Teresa (using my husband’s aunt as a stand in) is going to give her parents a heart attack when she walks in and calls herself Tiffany.
FC: “An’ then I would have been all, ‘Cowabunga, dude!’ and ‘Eat my shorts!'”
MW: “We’re going to name you prom queen in honor of y0u saving me.”
@Baja Gaijin: Don’t be confused. You’re looking at the latest in Plugger technology – the WalletPhone! Pluggers saw on the evening news how your sensitive information can be easily stolen from a smart phone. But this “phone” has a secret compartment on the back where they can securely store important items, like family pictures and birthdays, driver’s license, Medicare card, and cash. Just like a wallet! Pluggers aren’t going to get fooled by some scam on their “phone”
Luann: Masters of
missed erectionmisdirection!CS: “Why are you calling me ‘Mitch?!?’ I thought my dad was the one with dementia!”
9CL: Apparently, someone was recently critical of Brooke. It’s going to a be a sad, retributive week of comic strips, culminating in a raid of John Bolton’s house.
Dustin: Dustin needs to get the training to become a Brewster. I think he’d be decent at inventing names for craft beer.
It’s Monday, and everyone’s either shitting on or being shat upon.
Lockhorns: Leroy is actually one up on Thirsty Thurston if the lived in the same neighborhood.
FC: If Thel and whatsisname thought about it (i.e. took out a life insurance policy on you) they’d have brought it for you
H&L: Isn’t this just natures way of telling them to stop at four?
Slylock Fox will tie helium balloons to a robot monster capable of flying while carrying an auto? No. This is a job for someone more
expendablelittle and sneaky, like Max.@TheDiva: Naomi is the sanest person in the entire story but we’ll see how long that’ll last. She’ll either convert to Pope Olive and her patron Saint Mary or she gets driven away by her former friends who tell her to stop being “so mean to poor Olive.”
Marvin’s mom has figured out a good solution, she’s strapped him into his car seat in such a way that one quick stop will decapitate him.
@Ettorre: Yes, and it’s obviously a full carton or he couldn’t sip from it that way. One of many reasons I truly hate Dustin.
Marvin: Marvin as a series reminds me a lot of the weirdness of Hi And Lois’ portrayal of infants, but where that comic seems to think human babies are some breed of cat, Marvin believes that toddlers are sadists who take cruel delight in the suffering of others.
Dustin: Forget the lame joke, why the fuck is Dustin drinking his milk or orange juice or whatever straight out of the goddamn carton? I’d get it if he lived alone, but what kind of asshole does that when they’re living with their family?
Dustin: “Here’s something funny — my teenage sister handles my personal finances!” “What, is she a ‘Young Sheldon’ genius type or something?” “No, it’s more that I’m an idiot.”
Beetle Bailey
Wings cut the sky—sharp, in line.
One, then another—
payloads falling,
tiny bombs of chaos.
Soldiers scatter, no cover.
One casualty.
Sergeant Snorkle — direct hit.
Feathered pilots laughing.
Don’t grin with them, Beetle.
The sky’s still full.
They’ve got your name next.
@ectojazzmage: “but where that comic seems to think human babies are some breed of cat, Marvin believes that toddlers are sadists who take cruel delight in the suffering of others.”
So in other words, some breed of cat.
Do you think the artist in Beetle Bailey understands that Sarge wears a tie, and not a pair of disconnected triangles, the upper one attached to his neck, the other hovering ominously below? Or has it been reduced to mere symbolism, a icon of an early forgotten age?
Dustin is also out of date with him drinking orange juice, considering his age cohort has turned away from orange juice in a big way. This is either “old people making up youth culture (part of the Evansi System™)” or else this is just him being a dick by swigging his father’s juice straight from the carton.
The Marvin team shows, yet again, that they have never cared for–or, possibly, met–a toddler. There’s no joke in this comment, out of respect for the Marvin team, which clearly subscribes to some sort of devoutly anti-humor and anti-natalist cult or sect.
You’re in Dustin, Dustin. Nobody knows any good jokes.
@Everything Is Better With Monkeys: Dustin being in his mid-twenties is totally an informed attribute. Nothing about him connects with actual Zoomer behaviour.
@CanuckDownSouth: Preschool, pre-verbal, and thalidomide stump arms inside the straps.
Marvin was named for his father, Marvin the Martian.
@Needless Exposition:
It’s like the colorist is so bored with this strip, and who could blame them, they forgot the unnamed bully was supposed to be ethnic.
@astroboy: Save for the occasional background character, the Worthiverse is dominated by WASPs.
@Needless Exposition: Free Carlos Al(l)ora!
@taig: Poor Carlos. His family likely misses him but Czar Mary is keeping him in the basement where he’s been living off of rats and the wasted food from the residents. Except for the mayonnaise.
@astroboy: 11-“You should hang out with us” Sure,Olive would like that. She knows all the other nerdy kids-so there should be no shortage of “weirdos” for them to goof on. In fact, they could start with Wilbur and his dopey daughter Dawn!
Ah, but Josh, the use of dating apps is famously declining. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that a realistic Dustin would be going to fern bars, of course. I see him more sidling up to the younger-looking crossing guards and trying to get their digits.
FC: I finally figured it out. Jeffy is constantly waving that stupid pennant not to remind us they’re in San Francisco but to to remind Jeffy that he’s in San Francisco.
I don’t follow Marvin, but I presume he’s glad they’re caught up in dead stop traffic jams so that he can unload a 20 kiloton stink bomb into his diaper. This forces his parent(s) to inhale the miasma until they can reach a changing station.
RMMD: Do we move on to Truck and Wanda’s wedding now, or is Cody going to mull for a week about how he should have listened to Lorna? At the rate this story is unfolding, Jonah will not get his organ donation from Cody before the family Thanksgiving get-together. I’m going to say it will be Christmas. Maybe Easter.
Beetle – Hey! That comic strip just bombed my head! With unfunniness!
Don Abundio, translated:
“Abundio, 50 gorgeous actresses are auditioning for the female lead in my play”
“So I heard, Juan”
“It’s so painful to pick one of them and send the rest home”
“Well, maybe you don’t have to”
“How good are you gals at speaking in unison?”
Marvin-It gives Marvin time to fill his diaper. “HA! HA! HA!,” Marvin madly cackles,” Smell the unholy abomination that is in my diaper that you can’t change!”
@Tabby Lavalamp: Meanwhile over in Family Circus, San Francisco has been transformed into a row of dollhouses on a 40-degree slope.
Pluggers – Oh, it’s caption-swapping day! This is not bad, but I would have chosen Thursday’s: “A plugger knows that the best time to do something is ‘later.'”
Garfield-This would make for a great ‘Garfield Minus Garfield’.
@Peanut Gallery: Each of those dollhouses goes for a minimum of $2.5 million.
@Guillermo el Chiclero:
Jeffy is constantly waving that stupid pennant not to remind us they’re in San Francisco but to to remind Jeffy that he’s in San Francisco.
Too bad Jeffy can’t read…nor recognize abstract symbols…nor conceptualize geographic locations…nor manage spatial orientation. Hmm, I finally realize why Jeffy is never pictured with a thought balloon.
@Voshkod: I’m sure there are worse deals in real estate, but I can’t think of any at the moment.
Crank: Welcome to Crankshaft, where old jokes go to die.
JP: Hooray, it’s the return of Nasty CIA Woman! Now this plot is really going to go somewhere! (“Down the toilet” is somewhere.)
Pluggers: Huh, exact same caption as last week, different (and less successful) execution, and completely different thanks box. Does the Chief Plugger just make these names up?
MW: Hmm. What I’m kind of reminded of here is a section in, I think, the second Adrian Mole book, when Adrian had somehow been accepted as part of Barry Kent’s gang and, because he’s a bit of a twerp, takes a surprisingly long time to realise that they haven’t stopped being bullies, they’ve just stopped bullying him. Of course, in the Mary Worth version, I’m sure that the Power of Friendship has completely de-Meaned all the Mean Girls except Naomi, and this isn’t an invite for Olive to join them in making fun of weirdos who haven’t saved anyone’s life.
RMMD: “Well, that was a complete waste of my time. Still, at least it was over quickly. Imagine it being dripped out over the course of a week!”
OTF: Well, of course Ms Trellis’s Good Angel is the Blessed St Dethany. What’s more interesting is that her Bad Angel is … herself. I never thought “Is it possible for a work of fiction to go too far in portraying billionaires as evil?” until I started reading this strip.
@Horace Broon:
Crankshaft-Sadly that is the only thing that dies in this comic.
“I already showed her my bank statement, along with my social security card. But man, you should see her profile – she not only ‘loves to laugh’ but also ‘enjoys watching movies.’ And she told me she thinks it’s ‘so sexy when American boys still live with parents.’ I hear wedding bells!”
BB: reminds me of my USAF cadet days at Iowa State. In March, the campus is swarmed with migratory birds of some sort (crows, IIRC) that, let’s just say, are easily startled. You learned very quickly not to volunteer for color guard duty in March, because dry cleaning gets to be very expensive.
@Arabella: I think you’re onto something here …. since this is supposedly a medical strip, somebody’s going to need a transplant that only Cody can provide.
RMMD – Hey Jonah, way to alienate the guy you may need to bum a kidney off someday!
@ectojazzmage: Dustin. Dustin is that kind of a-hole.
Git Thorp: Panel 1 — nobody’s been that wide open since Denver’s Lucas Krull against the Cardinals. Of course, knowing GT, the receiver (probably Tobias) is going to drop the ball.
BB: This reminds me that a college friend who was just starting a walk in Geneva at the very beginning of foreign study got his hair pooped on by a seagull. He was much calmer than I would have been, and he later had a several-decade career in the Navy, where I’m sure his calm came in handy. Honestly, Beetle, it’s just a bird, not a kamikaze attack. Plus you and Sarge are wearing hats.
BB: This joke could be improved vastly by judicious use of Liquid Paper, or, I gather, Wite-Out. Try it on your own copy, but don’t put any on your computer monitor. It’s hell to get off.
@ectojazzmage: #50
“ but what kind of asshole does that when they’re living with their family?”
I think that question answers itself…
@taig: I gotta admit, this time the Evansii actually did live up to that claim. It’s a damp squib of a resolution like always but I was expecting this to be another awkward ‘meet cute’ leading to an awkward date first.
JP: Marcie went hardcore when she grew up to get out from under Peppermint Patty’s shadow.
RMMD: Sure, Spudson should have left well enough alone, but Lorna was so damn cryptic saying Jonah is merely ‘difficult’.
She needed to say ‘look, Jonah took our father’s shitty behavior hard and personally. *Don’t* try to connect with him, it won’t end well. I promise you that.’
Why are we assuming the bird is pooping on Sarge? Maybe its like that episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, “A Bird In The Head Hurts” and the bird just wants those strands of hair sticking out beneath Sarge’s cap for nesting material. Forget Beetle’s eyes, have we ever seen Sarge’s crew cut? The (actual) chicks dig the hair.
@The Quiet Man: It was a no-hoper from the start, since it would intrude on Gunther’s special relationship.
@Horace Broon: -looks up Adrian Mole-
I am sort of disappointed that he’s not a literal mole in some sort of cutesy “Wind in the Willows”-ish animal world.
Then again, I just remembered that I looked this book series up before some years back with the same expectations, from a comment on here mentioning it back then.
I only have myself to blame.
@Everything Is Better With Monkeys: ” or else this is just him being a dick by swigging his father’s juice straight from the carton.
__________________________
I must have missed the arc with DustDad deciding to package and sell his bodily fluids. Thank you for not featuring it on the blog, Josh!
@GarrisonSkunk: That was a real “Phrasing!” moment.
@The Rambling Otter:
-looks up Adrian Mole-
___________________
Isnt that Tony Shalhoub’s detective character?
@taig: Thanks :)
@Poteet: got his hair pooped on by a seagull.
________________________
Steven,Katie, George, or Jonathan Livingston?
Dustin: Don’t do it, Dustin! It’s a trick, intended solely to humiliate you!
Today’s Marvin is funny because the infant seat is depicted incorrectly!
@GarrisonSkunk: ok, and I can’t edit the original. I am only consoled by the fact that Dustin’s dad is the most juiceless person on the planet.
@GarrisonSkunk: ok, and I can’t edit the original. I am only consoled by the fact that Dustin’s dad is the most juiceless person on the planet.
FC – They’ll run down that incline and fall. I’m thinking about the old warning to kids not to run with a lollipop in their mouth – I used to imagine all sorts of gruesome injuries. This is relevant to FC, because the stick that pennant is on would do the same damage, and Jeffy is just stupid enough to put it in his mouth.
Mary Worth – This story can’t end soon enough. Unfortunately, there’s at least a week of everyone saying how special Olive is, and then several weeks of praise for Mary.
JP – “I’m not good at small talk.”
“Have you thought of joining Toastmasters International?”
Crankshaft – Today on Stilted Exposition Theater…
9CL – This is a rerun. The copyright date is 2023. We get to enjoy it again.
Pluggers – Maybe he’s trying to figure out how to use the Wallet app on his phone. Last year I ordered tickets to a concert, and they turned out to be electronic tickets. We had to go to Best Buy and ask the phone salesman how to load the tickets to my phone.