Some sad stories
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Blondie, 10/3/26
I know you can’t expect dreams to make actual narrative sense, but I think it’s OK to expect dreams that someone wrote and put into a linear storytelling form like a comic strip to make at least a certain degree of narrative sense. Like, in the first panel, I assumed this was going to be a classic boomer gripe about the kids today and their pumpkin spice lattes, which our heroic police are going to put an end to once and for all. But this cop handing Blondie a giant bag of pumpkin spice profits in the second panel certainly complicates things! I also find it upsetting that the anthropomorphic muffin vanishes between these two moments. Presumably the officer took it out back, murdered it with his prominently displayed gun, and then extracted its valuable spice content to reward Blondie for snitching.
Beetle Bailey, 10/3/26
Here’s a sentence I’ve never written or even thought before: I find the facial expressions in the second panel of today’s Beetle Bailey genuinely haunting. They aren’t looking on in lurid pleasure at the sex and violence on screen as you might expect: they look somber and deeply emotionally affected by what they’re watching. Yet the warning still drew them to the TV, like moths to a flame.
32 replies to “Some sad stories”
Curtis: Isn’t that casual pubescent sexual harassment so cute!
Mary Worth: is the second parrot claiming that one of the lovers cried out their ecstasy … in Spanish? Or is it … translating? Or is it saying “my God this is a stupid storyline!”
Blondie:
Remember the old TV ad campaign spots, “This is your brain…this is your brain on drugs”? Well, this is your comic strip on drugs.
Mary Worth:
“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!”
“My goodness, Sunny, you’re picking up English rather handily, aren’t you.”
Beetle Bailey:
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING STORY MIGHT BE DISTURBING
“Wow — they’ve turned Judge Parker into a TV show?”
Blondie: There’s something I really don’t like about the placement of the policeman’s hands, which almost looks like he’s placing that muffin between his butt cheeks for safekeeping.
BB: I know that there’s only so much room for text in these panels but there’s something funny about the short, blunt message that does not sound a thing like a warning carefully drafted by a stands and practices department. “The following story may be disturbing. We’re not sure, we haven’t checked. Oops, here it is now….”
Beetle Bailey:
Beetle is nonchalant about this. With that hat pulled over his eyes, he can’t see a thing anyway.
Blondie: The message of this dream is that Blondie has gone all-in on pumpkin spice-flavored items at her catering business, and is worried that it might not be profitable, especially because the one thing she doesn’t sell is coffee. (And also, people are already sick of pumpkin spice, which has been offered at other places since August, and have moved on to apple and maple and banana flavorings for their autumn treats.) Then again, given the overly detailed rendering of the cop’s gun in her imagination, this could also be a very, very weird sex dream. I’m guessing that when Dag asks “Are you okay?,” he’s genuinely worried.
MW: “oh Mary, oh Mary” is what Mary screams while in the grip of orgasmic delight. There is no god but Mary.
Oh heavens, Dagwood has finally corrupted Blondie. After years where he dreams of chasing sandwiches the height of refrigerators, now he has her doing it. And worse, not for mere gluttony but for soulless life-taking profit. Maybe in her next nightmare, the discarded paper cup from the murdered pumpkin slice muffin will give her a baleful, accusing stare from the trash can.
Beetle Bailey : “I-Is that an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!?” “Yeah, Sarge really went to town there.” “…!!!” “Relax, they said he only ATE his victims!” “THAT JUST MAKES IT WORSE!” “Relax, I don’t think the govt infected him with some kind of zombie virus, and we’re gonna start doing stuff like that too, it’s just the way Sarge is, he just got THAT hungry.” “THAT JUST MAKES IT EVEN WORSE!”
…Too far?…*************
Blondie : I think what’s supposed to be happening is that Blondie receives the equivalent of money she would have made had she given in to the pumpkin spice fad, as a reward for putting an end to it. Like, she’s getting compensated whereas all the people who WOULD have played along with the fad get nothing.
…À propos of nothing, why DO newspaper comics hate the pumpkin spice fad so much? I swear that’s the only place I hear (read?) people get that opiniated against it!
Mary Worth:
“Oh, Ian, are you getting ready to ‘toss the caber,’ or are you just happy to see me?”
Blondie: The most disturbing element of this comic to me is its Inception like nature. If I’m following the thought bubble correctly, the first panel is a dream of the gun in the second panel. A sad indictment of our society that our weapons dream of a world where the economy is based on physical violence against the exploitable, but it’s not – it’s simply about the police being the agents of capital.
Blondie has an inner life now? Are they going to start showing the living room from the side she’s facing?
Blondie: Nice of the officer to share a bag of loot he derived from their town’s rather draconian asset forfeiture laws.
“No pumpkin spice on my watch” He says.
Phantom Did we know that Muskmelon’s Moon-bot was a _prototype_(and one, I presume, that they don’t have easy-duplication plans for)? Because while he clearly misread the Evil Overlord List and is getting all the things to do / not do _backwards_, I think we’re now in “add new things to the list” territory what with “send my revolutionary tech that will conquer the world off on its mission when I only have one prototype I can’t replace” and “explain my plans over a remote loudspeaker to a henchman when the remote’s sensors indicated an enemy was in the area before shutting down”
@Anonymous: re: BB – Sarge as Tarrare finally succumbing to the insatiable hunger? Yeeks.
B. Bailey: (And now to the scene) The ideological clowns are out….
Blondie: With all my heart, I hope that Blondie said “YES!” in the exact voice of sportscaster Marv Albert.
BB: It must be pretty bad, because it’s even gotten to Killer … and Killer is named Killer.
Blondie: The latest news is that pumpkin spice is becoming passe, with consumers seeking new flavor trends and some establishments leaving it off their fall menu for the first time in years. So it makes sense that Blondie is out here riffing on it.
@Anonymous: Re: Blondie: Because they dared to do something different than it was “back in their day”, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and they dis it all without asking their “permission”, the nerve!
(Incidentally I think your assessment about what’s going on here is correct, but in a perverse kinda way, I dig it because a professional getting money for refusing to give their clients what they want seems very apropos for the comics page.)
Blondie took the time to put on an apron between panels. Is this considered flirting in the catering world?
SF: Finally, someone willing to stand up to Big Pumpkin Spice!
@Bob Tice: Oddly, Blondie and Dagwood are probably the only two comic strip characters that I wouldn’t want Rachel Leigh Cook bludgeoning with a frying pan.
I don’t get the hate for Pumpkin Spice (because it’s trendy?)
If people don’t like it, no-one is forcing them to buy it. Just buy what they want and live their lives.
@The Rambling Otter: I mean, I don’t care for Pumpkin Spice (it’s just another flavor to me) but I don’t see the point of why people viciously rant about it online. Again, it’s just a flavor.
C’shaft: THAT’S STILL NOT FUNNY
Dustin: Elementary school kids do not play baseball in PE class–there’s too much organization involved and the slow pace practically guarantees you’ll have people horsing around or sneaking out their phones inside five minutes. Maybe if Parker and Kelly knew that, their mocking of the nerdy unathletic kid would feel merely callous and cruel instead of openly hypocritical.
GT: Well no wonder Valley Tech is having such a hard time; how can they catch a football that blends seamlessly into the night sky like that?
Luann: Not if half of what I’ve heard about nursing homes is true.
JP: Dammit, you’d think a top CIA agent would get kidnapped a lot less….
@The Rambling Otter: I don’t hate it either but I will mock the absurdity of it showing up everywhere including dog treats and SPAM :)
BLONDIE: Not to get all “Freudian” on your asses, but this is definitely a representative sex dream too (Blondie’s enthusiastic “YES!” at the end cinches it because she finally gets to use facial expression #2.) Two noteworthy aspects of this erotic fantasizing is that the man chasing after Blondie’s muffin (mmm-hmm!) is decidedly not her husband (see, because ironically enough, it’s the only thing he hasn’t eaten) and that Blondie’s inner sensuality has been so deadened by the blight of her suburban ennui that even her “hunky” cop has a midsection as doughy as the baked good he is chasing, to confirm to neighborhood aesthetics of course. How sad.
RMMD-See ya around when you have an interesting story.”
FC-And that’s how the Keanes were excommunicated.
Blondie:
You might think that the first two panels of this strip are simply sequential parts of Blondia’s dream, but pay close attention to the bubble trails: the second panel is Blondie’s dream, while the first panel is a dream of the police officer’s gun within Blondie’s dream. This really should have been a Sunday strip, so we could have seen what the muffin’s shoes were dreaming about, and so on until the first panel is a nightmarish hellscape depicting total war between the race of man and the diabolical Muffinoids.
Blondie: again:
Unlike Blondie, if my fall involved watching the police chase around a sentient muffin, I would definitely not be okay, even if I did get a pumpkin spice-based settlement for pain and suffering.
Ran across a bookmarked MW this morning and realized that this arc has been going on for at least a month. Are we so inured to the pain that the hammer hitting our knee no longer hurts?