Fast Friday
Post Content
Beetle Bailey, 6/12/26
Whoa, looks like America’s foremost military-themed comic strip is going to take on the extremely current and relevant topic of women in the military! Anyway, a woman shouldn’t be in the military, because what if a guy hits on her in the middle of combat, and then she murders him with the gun that they give you before they send you into combat.
Family Circus, 6/12/26
I do enjoy the cold, calculating way in which Grandma is regarding Dolly here. “Oh, I could tell her the exact date and time when she’ll pass away, of course. I know it. I know it well. But I won’t tell yet. I’ll wait until she really displeases me.”
Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/12/26
OH, DO YOU THINK REX MORGAN, M.D., IS BORING? WELL, WOULD ALL THIS WACKY STUFF HAPPEN TO A NON-MAIN CHARACTER IN A BORING COMIC STRIP???
65 replies to “Fast Friday”
Mary Worth Mashup: What does Mary have to say about this little tableaux?
Family Circus:
“666, Sweetie!”
FC: “Well, number two comes to mind.”
Beetle Bailey:
Good to see that Ki ller Diller is sticking to his guns.
BB – A new reality series – Love (Kharg) Island….
FC – Gramdma’s a barrel of laughs…
RMMD – Ripped from the headlines – idiot lands on his feet….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
RMMD:
Ol’ Truck is sure rocking some Dupuytren’s Contracture in today’s first panel. Rex had better check that out.
Family Circus:
“Grandma, how come you look exactly like Daddy, only with a different haircut?”
@Baja Gaijin:
It’ll be even more annoying if they settle whatever the hell they’re doing with their conversation and this story ends with no Mistress Mary Meddle.
RMMD:
Well, there’s quicksand in the jungle
And sugar on a spoon
But I’ll never see, for the life of me,
More hair in a cartoon!
BB: I like the scare quotes on ‘ “work” ‘. Does Killer not see killing as work because he’s in it for the love of the game? Or does he just think that a silly little woman like her is just there as an affirmative action case? Because I’ll just note that of the two of them, she’s the only one actually firing the gun.
Family Circus: By bursting in and ominously declaring “Your days are numbered”, Grandma Keane wanted to destroy her family psychologically through paranoia. But what she didn’t account for is that they’re also very stupid.
BB Is “work” in quotes because Killer considers this pleasure? Suddenly his expression in that last panel seems kinda ominous.
FC Did Grandma just get back from a funeral? “God I wish it had been me..”
FC: Why is Dolly pointing at her Grandma’s knee? Does she think that will be the first to go?
There’s no excuse for sexual harassment, but it’s the expected result of letting Killer see your tongue.
@Schroduck:
On Beetle Bailey : I think Killer Diller is putting scare quotes around “work” because he’s of the mentality that if it isn’t office work in the private sector, it isn’t a “real job”.
Speaking of that mentality :
Dustin : You know, this is one of those times where the bit actually makes sense? Like, this time the girl only rejected Dustin AFTER he opened his mouth, and to say some of the dumbest shit possible to boot!
B. Bailey: An Army Major friend of mine who saw active combat in Iraq told me he didn’t care about gays in the military because he could squash any distraction through sheer “strength of will” —his words, but he was against women on the front lines because men were too emotionally unreliable in the presence of “girls” under fire.
Just saying this might be the most militarily realistic Beetle Bailey ever.
RMMD: Beatty, do you honestly expect me to believe that if Truck Tyler of all people were to list out the nonsense of Mud’s life, he would neglect to mention the time Mud pretended to shit his pants on stage to move from opening act to headliner? We all know Truck still seethes over that every night, hating both Mud and himself for lacking the shamelessness required to make it in the roots country business.
MW: “If you know you want to stay clean, then you will!” Apparently what Dawn wants is to turn into one of the pig-faced people from the classic Twilight Zone episode “Eye of the Beholder.” She’s well on her way.
Beetle Bailey, the art : why are they holding their rifles by the trigger guard instead of holding them by the grip?
Having done some research (typed “army rifle shooting drill” into a search engine), the way they are holding their rifles may be the most realistic thing ever depicted in Beetle Bailey. This disturbs me.
BB: Oh, what are those merry military misogynists up to now? It just never gets old!
@Anonymous: Oh wow, cross-snark! I was looking at their other hands, supporting the barrels.
@Anonymous: I think the current art team know as much about the military as the team at Gil Thorp know about whatever sport they’re currently bumbling through.
Beetle Bailey:
Forget it, Killer. There is no “after work” in your future: once your unit has lost this battle against the alien invaders and the few remaining human survivors have been enslaved, you’ll be sent to toil in the caesium mines on Grenulex Prime. Don’t lose all hope, though, maybe you’ll be put in a captive breeding program!
Family Circus:
So, how do you think this played out? Grandma running from room to room, bellowing “Our days are numbered! We’re all gonna die!” at the top of her lungs, or wandering the house semi-comatose and muttering it under her breath? Trick question: she actually enters the bedrooms of each of her grandchildren in the dead of night and whispers it in their ear while they’re frozen with sleep paralysis.
FC-Today’s lotto numbers are….!
RMMD-And John C. Reilly is playing Mud in his biopic.
MW-Tommy was somebody’s girlfriend in jail.
The most realistic thing in the comics today is how both Gil Thorp and Pearls Before Swine have The Olds using “6-7” when the kids have moved on (except maybe the “babies” are still doing it in K-2 according to mine)
MW You can do it because you want to, which is why society has no need for a bajillion different programs and supports for weight loss, smoking cessation, and substance abuse!
Luann Yup, she’ll sleep like a babe – getting to slumberland with enormous difficulty, waking every couple of hours…
BB: The lack of smoke or muzzle flash from their weapon leads me to think they didn’t give ‘duh gorl’ any ammunition and she’s having to make those ‘rat tat tat’ sounds herself.
JP: ‘Travel across Europe? On what, pasty face? You got fired when you dumped the boss’ kid, and going back to that $%&!-ing coffee house day after day to moon over that fugly barista wasn’t cheap! I SAVED my money, you can go running back to your little dog and pony show!’
Luann: Love how Phil is so secure in his relationship he included his mugshot so Luann ‘Goldfish’ DeGroot wouldn’t forget what he looks like.
DT: Yeah yeah, monologuing, final battle, cops come to clean up the mess. SEEN IT!!!!
@Vulpes: re:FC – well, I don’t think we’re allowed to have anything *that* amusing so most likely grannie is working on embroidering a cross-stitch with some verse from the Psalms and reading it out
Okay, I’d watch a movie titled KILLER OR BE KILLED. Couldn’t be any worse than Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill!, unless it was animated by the same team that draws Beetle Bailey.
@CanuckDownSouth: That would be Psalm 90:10, to be precise (KJV or GTFO).
@CanuckDownSouth: Ah, but this is Mary Worth. Remember that time when some character had been traumatized, and Mary’s advice amounted to “pretend it never happened”? We all had great fun riffing on Mary’s “just have a psychotic break with reality” technique, but it’s basically the same as Dawn’s “just want it”.
(By the way, if you do remember that episode, could you share the details? The riffing on Mary’s bad advice stuck with me, but not the character’s name or what had happened.)
The Family Circus: “Oh gracious no, child. I was talking about Days of Our Lives. They’re up to S1.E15405, according to IMDB.”
I read today’s Family Circus as “How much time do you have left on Earth, old woman?” If my interpretation is correct, then Dolly the Menace will be a very successful comic.
Rex Morgan, MD: “Welcome to Plot Synopsis, the Animated Series…”
Rex Morgan, M.D.: Today’s strip is doing nothing to convince me that the so-called main characters have not been written out of their own strip, or that Mud Murphy is not a thinly-disguised caricature of Sturgill Simpson, for that matter.
@Ken: The past only exists by how you remember it!
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: or Psalm 39 or 139 from a quick check (also references in Job but those don’t tend to be inspirational cross-stitch fodder :)
BB: Beetle Bailey has caught up with modern times enough to recognize that women do serve in the armed forces these days, but not enough to put them in post-WW2 uniforms.
RMMD: I guess “unbelievably convoluted and stupid” counts as being unusual, in a sense.
“The Sacred Band of Thebes was an elite fighting force composed by pairs of lovers, who would be more committed to fight to help their boyfriend. They were the greatest Hellenic fighters. But was the secret ingredient that they were gay or that they were lovers? It is a question worth investigating.”
“Private Killer, I am familiar with this historical fact. But this is not a scholarly question, I have to remind you that you are being court-martialed for sexual harassment of female soldiers!”
FC: Grandma writes down the number of days since creation, 2.19 million, on a piece of paper so Dolly will remember it. She writes it, however, in Roman numerals because of all the melon heads, she hates Dolly most.
FC No, no, Dolly – as the little kid you need to make an innocently-*creepy* response like “yeah, your number is two, bye”. How do you ever expect to get into a viral internet listcicle by actually asking for *clarification*?
You know, Dinkle, considering that you built a life out of being a tinpot dictator/band director/hyperaggressive salesman with no regard for human misery, why can’t you tell Crankshaft and Lillian to leave you alone?
BB: I found Killer distasteful even when I was a child. So … good judgment, younger me! I think it was the mustache. It’s still the mustache.
FC: The joke here is that Grandma has obviously just come from a funeral. Probably a close friend of hers.
RMMD: “Also, you’re friends with me! And just look at me! Am I not weird as hell?”
Dolly seems to forget the explicit biblical statement that nobody but the Father knows the time of the Apocalypse, which will arrive like a thief in the night. But for once I cannot single her out for being stupid or ignorant, since thousands of adult fundamentalists try to calculate the day of the Second Coming playing with the numbers in Daniel
“What are you doing after ‘work?’ Our work, which appears to be a battle in World War II, based on our helmets, rifles, and crudely drawn tank. The grass indicates we’re not in North Africa and the lack of hills tells me we’re not in Italy or the Ardennes. No bocage either, so not Normandy. I’m guessing we’re moving into the central German plains in early 1945, which means neither one of use wants to be the last American soldier to die in the European Theater of Operations. But, with any luck, we could be the first American soldiers to fuck on VE day. Well, the first hetero couple at least.”
“Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes!”
“Captain, they have a woman soldier…”
“So?”
“Look at her eyes.”
“WE SURRENDER, YOU MONSTERS!”
***
This is why people have two grandmothers. One to love and spoil the grandkids, the other to educate them on the cold eventuality of death.
***
I don’t retain much lore from the comics because… *gestures at the comics* So I don’t know if I was ever aware that in the Morganverse there is a cartoon show about a small-time musician in a niche genre who can only afford to stay in motels. If Rex Morgan, M.D. ever decides to become a strip about a medical doctor, they could probably do a really fascinating storyline about the cocaine TV executives in their world are imbibing.
Rex Morgan MD must have visited TvTropes and discovered “lampshade hanging”: when characters in universe recognise that the events of the narrative are rather unlikely, which helps sustain the suspension of disbelief. This was central to Millennials who grew up on Gen-X art like Simpsons or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The fact that you find it in newspapers comics proves the definitive institutionalisation of Millennial culture and the exhaustion of its vitality
Beetle Bailey: Killer goes Method during his training.
“If there’s one thing I want to do before The End…What I mean is, it looks like we won’t make it out alive.”
“Well, one of us won’t.”
H&L: Chip isn’t Mr. Right, but he’ll more than settle for being Mr. Right Now.
DtM: The Mitchells are a high-class family. Any of their peers would be eating microwaved slop off of paper plates by now.
C’shaft: Come on, Harry, what do you have in there? Your dad’s old vinyls and remaindered copies of your Claude Barlow biography? Nobody’s going to want to steal that crap!
Dustin: Nobody tell Dustin about duck genitals, or we’ll never hear the end of it.
MW: That’s right, drug addiction can be solved by simple willpower and a can-do attitude!
RMMD: Rene Belusso wonders how long Lorna Starr’s skin will stay pliable as he works his greatest con yet.
SlyFox: Damn, that goat got so stoned it became bipedal! Is that what brought about the Great Sapience, some kind of Food of the Gods scenario brought about by hot and cold running legal weed?
Family Circus: Grandma Keene is making overt threats to murder her family, but dang if those kids don’t say the cutest things!
@Rita Lake: Thanks. Just as bad as I remembered.
Curtis: From yesterthread, Called it!
BB: “You! The woman! Out of the foxhole now! Go make us dinner!”
“Yes sir, Mr. Secretary of War!”
“Well, Killer, now that the woke woman is gone, any interest in stripping down to your skivvies and doing some manly calisthenics with me?”
RMMD – That’s a little reductive there, Truck. Also, have you been to the CMAs? Some of these dudes look like cave men, and they’re married to model-grade women. It makes no sense, but it’s happening everywhere. I mean, I’m glad you and Wanda paired up, but you could have pulled a Faith Hill type with a little more ambition. Just saying.
FG: ”Well, anyway, I need you again. Put on this dress, you’re the new Royal Consort.”
BB: Killer has a pinup of her in his locker.
Luan: As most of y’all know, I have a long-held theory that Luann is intellectually disabled, “special,” “life skills”… pick your euphemism. All I know is today’s strips support my thesis.
Panel 1: Phil uses very simple words that Luann recognizes and understands. He includes a picture because object permanence is difficult for Luann. [On a side note, who describes mountains as “fragrant”? Flowers, yes. Certain kinds of trees, yes. Mountains? No. Humans don’t use that word to describe mountains. Maybe Phil is trying to improve Luann’s vocabulary.]
Panel 1 and Panel 2: Please note Luann’s heavy-lidded eyes, symptomatic of Down Syndrome or Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
JP: You’ve been living in a suburban bedroom community of Oslo for the past several months, Soph — pretty sure you’ve already seen the best Europe can offer.
Beetle Bailey-“Suffering from crippling severe PTSD.”
Luann-With the way the postal system works Phil will get his letter long after Luann returns.
@brendancalling:
I’m leaning towards Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. “I couldn’t get rid of the first one maybe I can get rid of this one.”
Rex Morgan: That really is an interesting life story — I bet it would make a good country song. Too bad there’s no one here who can write one! (I said a good country song. It doesn’t have to be as great as “I Walk the Line” or “Angel from Montgomery.” But certainly better than, say, “A Boy Named Sue.” And definitely better than “Glenwood Motel.”)
“What number is today?”
“It’s the 12th, dear.”
“Huh. I was honestly expecting a cuter answer.”
“Get used to disappointment.”
Family Circus: “Your days are numbered” sounds less like a wise saying and more like a threat. Watch yourself, Dolly — I think Gran’ma is handing out poisoned butterscotch hard candies again!
@BigTed:
“I got up on that stage
And I shat in my pants,
Then I fell for a scam
I shoulda seen at first glance
”Oh I’m now a cartoon
For the younger set,
An’ I jest started fuckin’
The actress I met…
Chorus
“Ya kin look at my face,
And call me a goon
But I’m the guy who wrote
‘Swingset on the Moon!’”
@BigTed: It’s all in the way you say it, like the difference between “Have a nice day” and “Enjoy your next twenty-four hours.”