Archive:

Post Content

Daddy Daze, 9/21/24

How it started.

Blondie, 9/21/24

How it’s going.

Archie, 9/21/24

Veronica tries a little too hard to sell Archie’s lame observation—not even a joke, really. Foreground Babe knows the score.

Luann, 9/21/24

What is it with this strip and basic repairs? We’ve seen Toni use a torque wrench to remove bolts (when the torque is zero you’ll know it’s off!) and a pipe wrench backwards until the fitting broke and flooded the laundry room. And now instead of splurging twelve bucks on a good flap valve, Bets here commits to a lifetime of jiggling the handle. Which is somehow a metaphor for her relationship with Gunther but I don’t wish to explore that any further thanks.

Gil Thorp, 9/21/24

Coach Kaz—man of action—has a go-getter’s literal-mindedness. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for Gil. Here, at this table, drinking wine with you! He invited me!”

Program note: Rod Whigham, Gil Thorp‘s artist since 2008, is retiring. He will be replaced on September 30 by Rachel Merrill, who looks to me like a good fit. Congratulations, Rod and Rachel!

9 Chickweed Lane, 9/21/24

Here we see that Edda’s self-image pretty much corresponds to Amos’s image of her, albeit with subtle enhancements. And Amos, “briefed” isn’t quite the right word; the one you’re looking for is “pantsed.”


Well, that’s all for me; Josh will be back tomorrow. This was a lot of fun—thanks, everybody! But as much enjoyment as I get subbing in for Josh, it’s also a lot of work. So I think I’ll go find myself a nice park bench and sit for a while.

—Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/20/24

Oh no! In this rustic retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk, Jughaid traded Ol’ Bessie for a handful of beans. The beanstalks grew to the sky in the traditional manner, but there were no gold coins, eggs, or magic harps on offer up there. Deprived of essential amino acids from Bessie’s milk, the Smifs will now die, and Barney Google will at last reclaim his strip.

Hi and Lois, 9/20/24

Chip Flagston, like Alexander Bumstead, is an anti-Dustin, attracting pretty girls without the slightest effort. But in a strip with 1950’s-era family structure, work environment, social mores, and frankly jokes, how does anything here really qualify as “retro”?

Beetle Bailey, 9/20/24

In an vulnerable moment, Sgt. Orville Snorkle is at last ready to let the sun shine into the black pit of shame and anguish that drove him to a half century of verbal abuse, savage beatings, and arbitrary punishment of his subordinate. Beetle is having none of it: this may not be the life he chose, but it’s the one he’s got and he’s not going to change it now. “Things are just fine, Sarge, do you hear me? Fine!

Judge Parker, 9/20/24

Ronnie, you’re the sensible, grounded one, remember? And yet here you are confiding in Neddy Spencer about a self-centered emotionally needy person who is not Neddy Spencer? Sure, you can always talk to her, but God help you trying to get her to listen.

Marvin, 9/20/24

Marvin‘s Jeff Miller gamely steps into Ed Crankshaft’s role now that Ed’s strip is off fighting 1950’s-era censorship or something. Got to admire how deftly he blends Crankshaft‘s negligent arson into Marvin‘s central theme, filth.


Just a reminder that there’s no Comment of the Week on my watch, so 2+2=7’s comment will ride up there for another week or until the math checks out, whichever comes first.

—Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Curtis, 9/19/24

Derrick and Onion are canonically the bullies in Curtis, but their game has been slipping for a long time. Way back in ’06 they were hard-core car thieves, but their malfeasance dwindled into vaguely threatening confrontations in school hallways accompanied by labored “Yo Mama” insults. Onion lost his trademark (“Onion”) quotation marks around 2016 and honestly hasn’t been entirely himself since. Tuesday we learned his given name is Norman, which doesn’t carry quite the same panache.

Now Derrick and Onion are in Mrs. Nelson’s class along with Curtis, assaulting the poor woman with flowers, candy, and honeyed words. Is this a redemption story, in which the two Learn the Error of Their Ways? A Josh-infuriating trauma plot, with a Big Reveal about the characters’ Painful Past that Explains Everything? A long con, as Curtis suspects? Or, intriguingly, one of those postmodern reframings of evidence that was right before our eyes the whole time, revealing Curtis as the real bully? I bet Curtis’s brother Barry would like to weigh in on that last one.

Dennis the Menace, 9/19/24

Oh, speak of the devil low-ranking demon, here he is with his familiar, Hot Dog. Wikipedia correctly pegs Hot Dog as “rarely seen.” He doesn’t have the personality of the Mitchell’s dog Ruff, and mostly just sits there in a lump with a smug expression on his face. So how would Mr. Wilson know he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do? Maybe he just assumes that about cats, based on his observations of Heathcliff and Garfield.

Gasoline Alley, 9/19/24

What I love about Gasoline Alley is Jim Scancarelli’s art: the guy’s an old-school natural, and so long as he doesn’t try to get all photorealistic on us, there’s an easy elegance to his work that takes me back to when newspaper comics were a Big Deal and worthy of craft (cf. L’il Abner, Out Our Way, Pogo, Steve Canyon, many more). And it’s charming when Scancarelli gets locked in on something he clearly wants to draw, like a locomotive or today’s World’s Most Adorable Water Heater. Just look at that thing: lovingly rendered hot and cold water lines (copper, no PEX for 18″ ’cause it’s gas), corrugated vent duct shared with the chimney flue no backdrafting here no siree, igniter access panel, overflow pipe, inspection tag, for Pete’s sake! There’s even an International Residential Code-compliant stand to protect against ignition of flammable vapors. But what does that sucker hold, maybe two quarts?

It almost makes up for the cutesy animals and Joel’s lame pun.

Baby Blues, 9/19/24

Zoe turns the tables on the old “just wait ’til you have kids” trope: sour grapes for Wanda!

Crankshaft, 9/19/24

Crankshaft joins Arctic Circle in the Ain’t-It-Awful Hall of Fame.


—Uncle Lumpy