Nothing worse than finding trust fund kids in your canal
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Andy Capp, 11/6/25
I know increasing globalization means that cities around the world are becoming more and more similar to one another in their interlocked material and aesthetic conditions, but it is unsettling to learn that even in Andy Capp’s Hartlepool, hipsters are leading a wave of gentrification as they snap up apartments in formerly industrial waterfront areas. I guess I can console myself that a Hartlepool hipster is entirely unrecognizable to any normal person as such (buzz cut, minty green suit) and that the canal is still full of drunks in an unironic way, for now.
Beetle Bailey, 11/6/25
The essential tragedy of Cookie is that he really does enjoy his job, but is constantly crestfallen when the troops react to his offerings with disdain and disgust. Well, today you can see that they’ve finally broken him. Do they think he just churns out slop day after day? Well, he’ll give them slop. Why bother trying. Why bother caring. Eat your slop, piggies!
Gearhead Gertie, 11/6/25
Sorry, I absolutely refuse to believe that Gertie would spend the off-season reading the NASCAR rule book, a tome that she long ago memorized in every detail. No, she would kick back and enjoy working through the puzzles in the 1990 original Days of Thunder Movie Family Fun Book from Exxon. A steal on eBay at only $6.99! Grab one today for the Gertie in your life!
60 replies to “Nothing worse than finding trust fund kids in your canal”
DT: Holy shit, the victim was Bela Lugosi!
RMMD: “You sound really upset! It’s honestly kind of a turnon, my heart is all aflutter!”
JP: What’s happened to you in all that time, Abbey? I don’t think you’ve headlined a storyline since the fire, it’s been all Drunk Judge Seeks Con Artist Daughter, Mopey Sophie ‘N Friends in the Big Apple, and of course, the continuing antics of everyone’s favorite rogue assassin, CIApril.
Luann: It’s funny because they’re all morons!
Beetle Bailey:
Cookie’s habitually-exposed upper arm hair makes the prospect of eating his offerings especially exciting.
B. Bailey: When a glutton like Sarge will eat any slop you put in front of him, it’s hard to get motivated.
Gearhead Gertie:
No less a personage than the iconic Oscar Wilde considered perusing the NASCAR Rule Book to be the equivalent of being imprisoned. Doing so was the inspiration for his work “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”
MW-The parrot is only stopping off in ‘Mary Worth’ on it’s quest to find a better comic.
FC-“Mommy, Jeffy’s only washed his hands forty-nine times.”
Andy Capp-“Don’t worry the more of you that move in we’ll be able to price his kind out of here.”
GG: There are 91 romance books in the Harlequin NASCAR series alone. Yeah, I don’t think Gertie is falling asleep reading the rule book.
AC: The most accurate detail here is that we can’t actually see any apartments on the canal side, or really any buildings at all. In Hartlepool, a single run-down boathouse still no doubt reeking of bunker oil and fish guts counts as an entire luxury housing district.
AC I was going to say that it’s funny how Andy Capp’s old-school British fashions are coming back as ‘hipster’ now, but then I remembered that ‘hipster’ itself is a term that is probably 15 years out of date. Now ita probably, uh, Rizz…guys? Something with 6-7? You know what, I’m sorry I brought it up.
BB Hey Beetle Bailey, what’s the joke today? Looks like…
GG You can tell thst Gertie is not in it for the love of the sport because surely there are other auto race competitions going on somewhere while NASCAR is on break? No, this is a dangerous obsessive behavior that will not end well.
FC: I know a lot of parents take the lock off the bathroom door when their children are toddlers but the Keanes might want to revisit that policy if Dolly makes it a habit to watch Jeffy taking a shit.
MW: If the parrot doesn’t even know its lines, this whole thing is just going to be STUPID.
DtM: Idea: Shave Dennis, change his clothes, drop him off at Joey’s house and leave town.
BB: With all of the money he pockets selling the Army’s food on the black market, Cookie could surely spring for a little manscaping.
Gertie wants the CD recording of the classic 1963 Indy 500, as she’s finally upgrading from vinyl. $15, cheap!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/261988967903
Phantom: Patrolman Huff-N-Puff.
@MKay:
On MW: It was going to be really stupid even if the parrot did know its lines. I’m honestly rather surprised Toby got to the pet shop escapee possibility so quickly.
BB: I mean, to me it looks like meatballs and … mashed potatoes, maybe. But go off I guess, Beetle.
(Are my comments getting eaten or just held over for moderation? The latter would make sense as I’m trying to post a comment with a lot of links, but I don’t see any message to that effect…)
“Estate Agent” has another briefcase marked “Drug Mule” that he uses on the weekends. diversification is key.
BB – Anyone else got a Four Tops song stuck in their head? Thanks, Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC.
Gearhead Gertie: Do you or a loved one know about the 1990 original Days of Thunder Movie Family Fun Book from Exxon? There is help for your crippling internet addiction. Call 1-800-GYR-HEAD to speak to a representative now.
Beetle Bailey: Cookie lovingly prepared a large tray of mashed potatoes and then just dumped a ten-pound bag of potatoes into the adjacent tray. You don’t have to be Gordon Ramsay to see this as a cry for help but apparently you do have to be smarter than Beetle who can’t decide which he’d rather eat.
MW: “What a PRETTY BIRD you are! What are you doing in a place like this?”
Toby, desperate for a date, tries to pick up the parrot using the same line Ian first used on her.
DT: The victim is badly hurt and believes he is dying. He fears the murderer will return – yet does not cry out or move to get help. It is a club so aren’t their attendants, a manager, etc. But okay, so he is doing, so he tries to hide a clue by deliberating annotating the score of a chess game and then clutching the king rook’s pawn.
Maybe it is all a fake out. Consider he wrote in French at the end. In languages other than English the pieces have different names. In German, the king is Konig, the knight is Springer, and pawn is a Bauer. But in French, the pawn is Pion. So my guess is that he is trying to implicate the Count Poniatowski? Grabbing the knight would implicate the Sir surgeon and of course grab the bishop to implicate the Bishop.
GT: Why are the girls uniforms odd? They maybe on average be smaller than the guys but they should have uniforms that fit?
JP: Everyone has troubles Charlotte. Some have troubles due to international espionage and the world of crime, er adventure. Others have troubled by drink.
RMMD: You write what you know. Augie knows this situation.
@Hibbleton: She probably would although she probably sees Jeffy shitting his pants all over the place all the time anyway.
What really sells this one is the angry look on Jeffy’s face. Maybe he’s shitting himself now.
Meanwhile, I was in a work meeting yesterday with our version of Dolly Keane. I had a few things to say that might troll her into tattling on my again. I’m retiring in two months, and would like to really piss her off at least one more time.
Beetle Bailey: Slop? Beetle’s dinner is very clearly going to be meatballs and mashed potatoes with the peels left in! It’s not great from the perspective of not having a fruit, green vegetable or really anything else with it, but if Sarge’s constant beatings aren’t enough to kill Beetle, I suspect vitamin deficiency and constipation won’t be enough to get the job done either.
I’ve been reading Andy Capp ever since I was a kid, so 50 years give or take, and it’s taken me until today to realize that the Hartlepool Monkey is not missing from the strip. Look, he’s crawling out of the canal right now, getting ready to stand for Parliament.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Abundio lives in a strange world! All those million-dollar deals made at poolside!”
“Really? I haven’t seen him do that kind of thing”
“He doesn’t”
“But his dog is a real player!”
@The Quiet Man: Yeah, but the parrot not knowing its lines means it’s stupid and drawn out past the point of boredom. Moreso than the two-week recap of the previous arc that we just sat through, I mean.
AC —
A hipster strode jauntily down the pier
Following the slimy salesman at his back
While Andy sputtered in the dull canal
On a winter evening behind the boat house
Musing upon the drunk his brother’s wreck
And on the drunk his father’s death before him.
Pluggers have noticed inflation exists. That hasn’t happened to anyone else.
GT Forget whether the uniforms’ fit is off or it’s just the bad art, why aren’t they wearing helmets?? Maybe a head injury explains some of the Mimi plot holes – she could have just forgotten Jami in Europe for a bit.
DT Dying, he was afraid to cry out in case his killer returned … to kill him some more?
Y’know, if I’m ever inexplicably left to finish dying by a murderer in a room in a club filled with guests and servants, I’m making the commotion. Maybe the murderer comes back … but also others who will find him! Or you can get blood on him or injure him – anything that will help Mark him and you might get posthumous justice. Or maybe, just maybe, help arrives first and you have a chance of survival. Sheesh, this is the intelligence of the royal cryptographer?
AC: Andy is the “rent-lowering gunshots” of his neighborhood.
GG: Look, I get Gertie has a hyperfixation–it’s literally the only joke in this strip. But doesn’t she have any other hobbies she can tie into it? Like, can’t she make a quilt in a finish flag pattern or write weirdly kinky stories about her self-insert character having a torrid affair with Kyle Larson?
@CanuckDownSouth: The mystery was shaping up better before they found the note — the guy was murdered by a Bishop, a Knight, or a guy named Pawn-iatowski, and has time to clutch one chesspiece. As you say, it makes far less sense if he had time to compose an elaborate cypher and write it out in a beautiful copperplate hand.
Andy Capp: Wait, hipsters are still a thing? Why didn’t anyone tell me?
***Dons purple pin-stripe suit, goes downtown to drink PBR***
MW: [one week later] Hey, Wilbur. Have you seen my new pet parrot?
Wilbur with feather sticking out of his mouth thinks; “Uh, oh”
@But What Do I Know?: Very nice.
Legacy comics are a tricky thing. Do you try to change as little as possible or take the strip in a whole new direction? What if you’re handed the reins of one about an alcoholic? Do you make jokes about how messed up he is by his addiction that he ends up nearly drowning in a canal while an estate agent gaslights a potential customer in order to not lose a potential sale? Yes… Ha ha ha… Yes!
***
Looking at the table Cookie is serving from, the US government shutdown has really hit the army hard.
Well, today I learned that there are NASCAR Harlequins. So, my day isn’t wasted.
@Ken: And the chess dude looks at it and says the moves he annotated were unremarkable when he should have said that the annotation makes no sense. You can’t put a question mark on a checkmate, the move that wins the game can’t be a bad move.
“There’s a fella thrashing around in the water, shouting.”
“Oh, don’t mind him. He’s wild water swimming. It’s really popular.”
“Fully clothed?”
“Adds to the challenge, don’t it?”
“With cement blocks tied to his feet?”
“Really adds to the challenge.”
“Is that Ronnie and Reggie Kray and their boys standing over him, watching him sink?”
“What? No. They’re the . . . uh . . . lifeguards!”
C’shaft: “I mean, you’ve been doing this for decades; shouldn’t you be better at it by now?”
DT: Okay, so let me make sure I understand this: this guy King gets stabbed, presumably by Count Poniatowski, in the middle of a Victoedwardian gentleman’s club. He doesn’t call for help, because apparently only his killer is within earshot, but fortunately all the suspects have chess-based names and there’s a chessboard handy so he palms one of the pawns as a way of fingering his killer. But THEN he also writes out an elaborate cipher in chess notation even as his lifeblood is spilling out all over the paper, even managing to scribble his own epitaph “le roi mort” as he expires. Oh, and none of the other club members or staff come walking in during all of this, even though this is a semi-public space and absolutely nothing is preventing that.
This is absurdly convoluted for a Minit Mystery, or indeed any mystery at all.
Dustin: Women, amirite? They’ve internalized social propaganda that ties their value to their appearance to the point where they can’t even appreciate the simple joys of nature on their own terms anymore!
JP: Charlotte’s going to be trouble if she keeps pointing out plot holes like this.
Luann: “You’re all being too pushy and demanding! You should be pushy and demanding in my passive-aggressive way!”
MW: Poor parrot is seeking help from someone less intelligent than it is.
Gasoline Alley: Propinquity is also a word you shouldn’t say in Hootin’ Holler. I smell a crossover!
Pluggers:Four hundred dollars? Pluggers may have filled their cart with kobe beef and fugu, expecting to pay oxtail and Chicken of the Sea (chunk light, none of that solid white Albacore) prices.
Between Friends: It’s still the same old story (goes the song), but this is a good way to put it across.
AC – I could’ve been somebody…instead of a douche’…which is what I am….
BB – Today’s Special – SOS….
GG – Move along folks – nothing to see here….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
I never thought I’d wake up today and see an unironically funny and pointed piece of social satire that is also actually relevant in this century from Andy Capp, of all places, but I can tell you it has made my day immediately better
MW: I’m waiting for the parrot to insult Toby’s intelligence. Airhead rawk.
Gearhead Gertie reviews the rules for caution flags and restart so she can properly signal her husband during their rare amorous adventures.
Pluggers: That’s nothing. My parents would tell you they remember when you could fill a grocery cart for twenty bucks.
DT: Hey, when this story started wasn’t the victim an old guy who looked like a cross between General Burnside and Mr. Jing-a-Ling?
FC: Mommy, Jeffy’s flushing his poop down the sink again!
FC: Mommy, Billy’s masturbating in the shower again!
FC: Daddy, Mommy’s passed out drunk in the bathtub again!
It doesn’t happen often…but I found FC genuinely funny! But Dolly needs to get busted for walking in on her brother when he’s in the bathroom.
Andy Capp: I feel like the writer said to himself, “I know, let’s show how hip and up-to-date we are by making a comic about hipsters, a subject I’m sure everyone still talks about!”. And than he got writer’s block after making the first panel because he has no idea what hipsters actually are and eventually decided to just break the joke-about-drunks emergency glass.
Beetle Bailey: Does “slop” usually look like Hawaiian bread rolls and oatmeal?
MW: I can’t tell which of these two characters is playing the straight man.
GG: Gertie is reading the NASCAR rule book for the same reason as W.C. Fields read the Bible:
“Just looking for loopholes”.
NASCAR operates under the same code as Jesse “The Body” Ventura:
“If you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t tryin’”.
Marrys Worst: “Bleat bleat!”, ” bleat bleat!”, the parrot went “bleat, bleat, bleat!”
@Liam: Where did that parrot come from? Anyone do a welfare check on Ziggy lately?
Hey, there POTEET!
Be on the lookout for these guys!
Today’s dinner at Camp Swampy is a mobile game ad. Much like Calvin’s dinner, it’ll start talking soon. “Shake it off, shake it off.”
Andy Capp: A flat (sorry, “apartment”) right on the water? If this kid isn’t the modern version of one of the Guinness heirs from that Netflix show, there’s no way he could afford to live here. (And if he is, Andy Capp will treat him like a god. I think he’ll be fine in this neighborhood!)
@matt w: To be fair, that is not the winning move. If the king moves to h8 it doesn’t work. But, the other annotations also don’t make much sense.
@matt w: “Why a ‘?’ next to checkmate? The winning move can’t be problematic.” “Maybe he was annotating his own pre-death puzzle making?”
@treetown: To be fair, that is not the winning move. If the king moves to h8 it doesn’t work.
Oh lord. If it turns out “le roi est mort” for a non-checkmate means King isn’t dead, and Tracy pulls a rubber mask off one of the suspects to reveal King is the murderer — well, it’s no more than I’d expect from a Minute Mystery.
Maybe the ? next to a checkmate was a shibboleth of sorts. It means ” If you understand chess notation well enough to understand this message, then you understand that I’m telling you something is very wrong about this chess game.”
There ain’t no rule that says a golden retriever can’t drive in NASCAR! (Sorry, just pitching an actually interesting Gearhead Gertie future plotline.)
MW: In real life I have seen an escaped parrot in my back yard. It was under constant attack by the regular neighborhood birds and screaming as if it were being torn limb from limb, incessantly. It resisted my offer of crackers and refused to come to me. Finally it flew off, accompanied by its tormentors. That’s why I think this story line is complete rubbish.