Or maybe fire in the real world is more recent than I imagined
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B.C., 6/24/26
Sorry, the kind of brain I have will simply not let me let this “60 years” thing go. Did you know that B.C. started its run in 1958, 68 years ago? Does that mean that somewhere in the Deep Lore of the strip there’s an installment from 1966 when one of the indistinguishable cavemen, inspired by the Beat scene or possibly the Civil Rights Movement, discovers fire?
Beetle Bailey, 6/24/26
I genuinely enjoy Sgt. Lugg’s beleaguered facial expression in the second panel. Is this what it’s come to? Is this the price of finding and keeping a barely half-acceptable partner? Is heterosexuality worth the cost?
Judge Parker, 6/24/26
“Norway was like, ‘Hey, is that what you look like? We agree! We agree with that choice! Keep right on doing it!’ That’s why I look like this. Same as I did before, I mean.”
65 replies to “Or maybe fire in the real world is more recent than I imagined”
B.C.:
Maybe this is where The Crazy World of Arthur Brown got his idea.
Beetle Bailey:
“There’s a lot at steak here, Ms. Buxley! — or should I say ‘Sheila,’ since that’s your given first name in the strip and it’s the one I’d use in the workplace, even though it’s rarely mentioned in our strip.”
Judge Parker:
“You look…exactly the same! — you know, just like our strip stories, what with broken romances, constant tension and impossibly gratuitous violence!”
Luann: “Aphrodisiac”? You were using it wrong.
Anyway, “Bunny”, “Daisy”, “April”, … there are no good male names for Easter/Spring, so it’s going to be a girl.
Judge Parker:
“Who’s the hobbit you brought with you, anyway, Neddy? — is she visiting from Middle Earth or something?”
The evening goes on, for hours. Sarge still gets no steak. The hungerrage consumes him. Many die terribly. But they were in the audience for Office Romance. No charges were filed.
JP:
Neddy: “You look… exactly the same!”
Sophie: “What can I say? It’s easy when we’re 90% clip art and tracings.”
If you spend your year never being seen to work at your internship, and going to a coffee shop nearby a grand total of twice, you too can have a body that functions only at right angles. Nailed it, ladies!
MW: The only way the art in the second panel makes sense is if Dawn has her legs around Mary’s waist and she’s swinging her around like a toddler. Wheeeeeeeee!
@Little Guy:
there are no good male names for Easter/Spring
Pascal.
FC-“Well it’s finally happened,” A neighbor says, “She’s thrown them out.”
MW-“Excuse me, Dawn, while I go make a phone call.” And Brandy was never heard or spoken of again.
BC-Well after discovering the atomic fire that destroyed the world they are back to square one with regular fire.
Since Smoke On The Water came out in 73, far past 66, tragedy struck today when I was completely unable to think of a snark for B.C. Also, I’m out of Chock Full O’ Nuts. I don’t wanna go to the store!
B. Bailey: Luckily, Miss Buxley, there are no flies in the void.
@Little Guy:
I believe you’re forgetting about the great Appalachian Spring Johnson!
BB: If Ms Buxley were a true friend, or even minimally humane, she would’ve given Lugg a good talking-to years ago about raised standards.
RMMD: “But are they truly WORTHY of my small change?” wonders the woman with the square head.
JP-“At least we look better than those poor people in ‘Gil Thorp’.”
JP: “Yes, my extended stay abroad didn’t change me in any way, physically, mentally, or spiritually! That’s how I know it was a success!”
Six Chix: I’m inscribing today’s date into a huge piece of granite: Six Chix made me chuckle unironically. I know! It’s about as rare as spotting the Loch Ness Monster in the self checkout at the grocery store. Or reading a funny Six Chix. Very rare indeed.
BB: Is Sgt. Lugg meant to be tossing the steak over her shoulder in the last panel, or is she balancing it on her fingers? Probably the former, as it’s no doubt best to have it nowhere near her fingers when Sarge starts a-chompin’
JP – “No, I mean you look exactly the same as me!”
“What can I say? Manley just doesn’t have much of a range.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“It’s your deal, Abundio”
“One for you… one for you… one…”
“What’s wrong, you don’t like the symbolism?”
GT: Gil looks like he aged about 20 years in the last panel.
GT: Why the hell would you want to cheat, you sawed off little troll? Your wife is smoking hot and as a doctor she’s the family’s main breadwinner. Who’d want to derail that gravy train?
BB: I appreciate the strip ending here, and not showing us the nightmarish things that will go on with that steak in Lugg’s bedroom later tonight.
@Baja Gaijin:
It WAS chuckle-funny. Is…is the moon blood yet?
BB: Are they not going to eat on this date? Won’t she lose all control of the situation when Sarge realizes he can order his own bigger steak? Or is the possibility of additional and free food just that tempting to him?
GT: I’m beginning to think Luke has some form of Tourette’s which causes him to shout sports phrases mid-conversation.
MW: Is Dawn falling backward?
B.C.
The general scientific consensus is that the first humans to control fire were not modern or even archaic Homo sapiens, but its ancestor Homo erectus, probably by around one million years ago and perhaps as early as two million. Now, there’s active disagreement among theologians, in particular Catholic ones and others who accept evolutionary theories of human origins, whether H. erectus possessed a rational soul like modern humans, so considering the primitive people of B.C are known followers of Jesus, this comic is actually addressing much more interesting theological territory than it first appears. Would Johnny Hart have approved? Well, on one hand, he probably believed H. erectus fossils were fake or only 6,000 years old or something, so maybe he would reject the entire premise of the question, but on the other his B.C. also depicted ants accepting Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, so maybe his version of Christianity was far more radical than we give him credit for and he would consider H. erectus‘s status obvious. Much to think about in this comic about a caveman setting his hair on fire!
CS: Somebody photoshop this into Dinkle kicking Charlie Brown’s baseball team off their field. Because that’s about how funny this is, Batiuk, you sick bastard.
Luann: Toni’s going to have a water baby? Okay, but the proper term is “hydrocephalic.”
MW: Speaking of things that cause severe headaches…
C’shaft: I will never understand why music teachers latched on to Harry Dinkle as their mascot. He’s just a vehicle for the same three or four jokes, most of which don’t have anything to do with music, and all of which make him a nuisance to everyone around him. You’re better off making Harold Hill your avatar–at least he managed to deus-ex-machina his way into his students giving a barely coherent performance.
Dustin: “Give it up, Dustin. Dad lives in a Boomer bubble that no comprehension of the modern world will ever, ever penetrate.”
Luann: Just when I think Brad and Tony can’t be any more nauseating as a couple, I find out they have matching tattoos.
MW: “But one can be a lonely failure of a woman in spite of all her friends, so you’d better get him to put a ring on it soon! You’re not getting any younger, you know!”
RMMD: “Sarah, it’s high time you learned to be suspicious and disdainful of poor people.”
BC Comic for March 5, 1958:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/the-official-gocomics/images/1/18/Fire_discovering.jpg/
JP – Everything about Charlotte’s body language says she is as impatient with this inane bullshit as we are. Thank you, Charlotte, for fuming at this so we don’t have to.
@Vulpes:
Everyone knows that all archaic humanish fossils are the victims of The Great Flood. Right? AiG says so.
Or I could post a version that isn’t for ants?
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/the-official-gocomics/images/1/18/Fire_discovering.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20210730182826
@Lauralot: MW: Is Dawn falling backward?
Probably from the shock of turning and seeing that rictus on Mary’s face. It looks like she should be chanting “One of us… One of us…” Maybe those “zucchini” are body-snatcher pods?
Ha ha! Even if that guy survives the fire on his head, without access to modern medicine the infection is going to kill him! Hee hee!
***
That’s the face of someone who doesn’t know why she’s even trying to have a relationship with this man but thinks that any relationship is better than none at all. I wonder if the Lockhorns met in the army too.
***
“You look… exactly the same!” B-word, it’s only been a year and it was just Norway. And I challenge you to hide the hair of all the women in this comic and try to tell them apart.
CS I’m sure Batiuk thought the baseball kids almost being the Peanuts gang is an oh-so-clever detail but (1) don’t remind your readers that much better comics exist and (2) keep your timeframe straight! those plastic protective helmets weren’t used (or even exist??) in the pre-WWII Big Band era
Luann Forget the whole what-will-they-name-him/her, are Toni’s hair genes dominant? Will the world generations from now be overrun by humans with sponges on their heads that never change shape even as they get soaked??
CS – Batiuk has been using “the players tried to take the field/ but the marching band refused to yield” as Harry Dinkle’s punchline forever, so now the joke is that it’s hereditary?
Beetle Bailey: Oh, Louise. This strategy is doomed from the get-go. Haven’t you ever heard the proverb “Why buy the cow when you can have the steak for free?”
After his LEAVE ROOM FOR JESUS interjection the other day, it reminded me of a story someone told of being from out of town and attended a game at The Stadium in New York. Some native New Yorkers were given them some suggestions:
“You should get some New York pizza. There’s a place near Rockefeller Center . . .
“SORIANO, YOU’RE A MOUTHERFUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!
“Or you could go to one on Lexington . . . ”
It’s like Vin Scully weaving a story during a Dodger broadcast – “and a curveball is outside, the count’s 2-1” – working in relevant game information seamlessly into his story.
Coach Herandez-Martinez is no Vin Scully. (I once introduced myself to Vin and said we had met before. In his dulcet tone, Vin stuck out his hand and said, “Scratchy, it’s good to see you again.” I didn’t mention that my interpretation of meeting was urinating next to him in San Diego.)
68 years old? Does that mean BC is only two years from falling into the public domain?
Woops, no, I got excited for nothing. Johnny Hart died in 2007; we’ve got decades to go before I can publish my fanfic where Alley Oop, BC, and Fred Flintstone have a threesome.
Hmm. Decades before I can publish it for profit…
Also Beetle Bailey: 9:00 a.m. Wednesday. A sad man, alone at a work table, looks at his empty gin and tonic. He goes to the cabinet and pulls out a bottle, only to discover it’s empty. He sighs deeply, returns to the table. He pulls out a pencil, a few pens and markers, a protractor that he examines, baffled. Then, with another sigh, he begins to draw. Almost as soon as it started, it is complete. He snaps a photo on his iPhone and sends it to his editor with the caption “Good enough?” “Good enough,” responds the editor. “Also, you owe me 50 bucks for the last tee time.”
MW: No, Brandy who’s a fine girl isn’t coming back. She got a job as a barmaid in some waterfront dive in a harbor town that serves a hundred ships a day. She serves whiskey and wine to drunken merchant seaman. She’s in love with one of them and wears a locket that bears his name made of finest silver from the north of Spain.
JP: “Thanks! And you look like a junior counselor at an evangelical Christian youth camp. What happened to the slinky Parisian fashions and the L.A. babe oufits?”
DT: This is the woman who really really wants to commit adulterous sex with Sam, right?
@richardf8: #36: At least Dinkle the elder had the decency to actually use the field for it’s intended sport and not more band practice.
B. Bailey: Carrot and Stick? Because if she puts the steak on the ground and whacks him on the ass with a honking big stick when he bends over to eat it, I understand the look on her face. In a camp that large there’s gotta be at least a few chubby chasers who don’t need public humiliation to get their freak on.
Pluggers – this is a bald-faced lie. Not needing to pack medical extras is one of the memories incipient dementia has deleted from their lives.
FC: Of course, we all know that Jeffy’s going to eat whatever flies he kills.
“I’m using a stake, right in his malevolent heart. It’s all I can do to save the enlisted soldiers.”
@Everything Is Better With Monkeys: Also, where do Pluggers travel to?
BEEYLE BAILEY: “And boy…you do not want to find out where I have to put this thing we’re ready to have sex!”
@Rube: sadly, he’s left the oven burners going and the front door wide open. He’s packed two suitcases with random items from the kitchen cabinets and is walking to the bus stop… fortunately for his family, they’ll find him there as the bus hasn’t run since 1967.
JP: Abby may have spoken too soon when saying Sophie hasn’t changed any. I noticed that a friend of mine was tying his scarf with a different knot after a trip to Norway. Just saying that the big payoff for this Norwegian adventure might not be revealed until December.
GT – Sixteen years – wow, that’s two whole seven-year-itches. I mean admittedly, great that he hasn’t cheated on her, but that’s a pretty low bar to clear as happy marriages go.
“Sixteen whole years, and I’ve never slapped her hard enough to leave a mark.”
“Sixteen long, painful years and I’ve only called her a c*** (to her face) three times.”
“It’s been 1.6 decades, and I haven’t once threatened to drop kick her and our sorry kids into the Grand Canyon.”
@Rube:
Also, where do Pluggers travel to?
They were all with me on the cruise I took last week
(my sister-in-law planned it as a family reunion).
B.C.: “Oh great, just when I finally sang the volcano to sleep you run through here screaming.”
JP: I see Sophie brought her Norwegian mini-fridge back with her.
There was a B.C. strip where Wiley was walking along thinking to himself all sorts of vituperative words like “falsifier,” “terrifier,” “stupefier,” and he tripped over a small fire setting his peg leg alight and shouted “Fier!” Then there was a whole series about this new “Fier” they had discovered. Could have been sixty years ago, the days when B.C. was funny feel more distant than the Stone Age.
Norway, Neddy thought, she hid part of her soul in Norway. Along with the fragment they’d found in the crashed bus, and the one embedded in the horse at the ranch, that would give them three of the four they needed to destroy Sophie. Neddy hugged the undying abomination tighter, as if trying to crush the empty vessel that was once her sister.
Crankshaft: “And you, with the batting helmet, get back in your time machine. It’s 1948, rock ‘n roll has yet to hit white kids. You have no place in a reflection in my memories of the Big Band era’s dissolution.”
GT: An ex-ladies’ man talking about baseball? Is this metaphor regarding the bases on purpose, or is that simply more meta humor than this strip is capable of?
Pluggers travel on foot, continually wondering why their trips don’t turn into It Happened One Night or Modern Times.
DtM: Giving any child what appears to be a youth-sized vuvuzela is a crime.
RMMD: “Why? Because these are gentrification beggars! Can’t you see the violin amplifier?”
@Rube: Also, where do Pluggers travel to?
Branson. Definitely Branson.
B.C. followup: The “Fier” strip was the third in the series, starting with lightning striking a tree outside B.C.’s cave. You can see them starting here at p. 46. And one of Wiley’s words was “crucifier.” I had thought it wasn’t, because this was well before Hart started proselytizing through the strip.
And the copyright date at the front of the book is 1958, 1959, so I guess it isn’t the 60th anniversary.
@Hibbleton: #44: True, in a male dominated environment like the military, any single woman is a catch and would have no trouble getting dates. Years ago Doonesbury pointed that out, that a woman who’d normally be a five or six on the one to ten scale in civilian life, would be an eight or nine on a military base. A female former co-worker at an appliance warehouse years ago told me if you’re the only woman on the factory floor, you’re a babe.
LUANN: Sigh. Only in Luann could the payoff of an extended sequence of shower-based copulation be cringe-inducing bathroom puns instead of an orgasm. Apparently the creators thought this horrible wordplay was worth briefly turning the comic into Luann After Dark.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Or Henderson, NV
Josh has an amazing sort of energy, actual jokes aside, even when he makes just literal simple observations… I’m laughing ^^
GIL THORP: “Remember, Thorp, when I was first introduced and bragged about my fidelity on air and showed of my wedding band as if it were just another championship ring? Anyway, you and whats-her-name deserve each other….which ironically enough is what I was saying when I implied on air that you were some kind of unfaithful bastard! (loud braying laugh) Ah memories!”
@48 Rube: Where do Pluggers travel to? Apparently whatever grocery store at which I’m shopping.
@60 Guillermo el chiclero: Your implication is that Cathy of “AAACK!” fame should have worked in on a factory floor or warehouse. She would have her choice of men versus being stuck with that one potatohead.