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Hagar the Horrible, 5/19/25

I really appreciate how chill Hagar is about his own prosecution here. Based on the wigs, he’s probably being tried for his crimes in England, which was particularly powerless to stop Viking raids during this period, so presumably he’s sticking around out of curiosity to see what the verdict will be before his warrior band overwhelms the inadequate local Saxon levies and frees him by killing everyone in the courtroom.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/19/25

Snuffy Smith has been doing a storyline where Barney Google has reappeared and is practicing law with no more legal training than his big city smarts, and apparently he’s winning case after case. This just goes to show the importance of an adversarial legal system: after decades of townsfolk being forced to appear in court without any legal representation, the town’s law enforcement community has lost all ability to make even the basic arguments necessary to convict obvious lawbreakers like Snuffy Smith.

Hi and Lois, 5/19/25

Look at the big smiles on Hi and Lois’s faces! They’re positively giddy at the prospect of watching 2024’s feel-good Oscar fare like Anora and The Brutalist. C’mon, Chip, join in on the fun!

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Blondie and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/20/25

No one person can know the totality of human cultural practice, of course, even within their own country, and I’ve had the repeated experience on this blog of seeing some odd behavior in a comic strip, posting “Nobody does this, right?”, and then being told in no uncertain terms that said behavior is in fact normal and I’m weird for not knowing about it. For instance, at least one person claimed that “blonde moment” is not just a thing that people say, but is actually more common than “senior moment” in their experience. Life is a rich tapestry! Anyway, my main request to the comics is that they at least stay on the same page when they confront me with some novel practice. For instance, do children actually go door to door during the day on Easter Sunday asking for chocolate, as a spring mirror of Halloween trick-or-treating? Or is this the sort of plan that aspiring hillbilly grifter children would come up with, and we’re meant to understand that nobody would possibly go along with it?

Panel from Slylock Fox, 4/20/25

So, uh, who do you guys think drove that car into the ocean? They’re dead now, right? They received a watery comeuppance for their bank-robbing crimes? Their bones have been picked free of flesh by the crabs, and are loosely piled on the floor of the car?

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/5/25

Wow, I had always assumed that Hootin’ Holler was cut off from outside civilization to the extent that it’s blessedly not affected by unrealistic youth and beauty culture, but here I see that not only am I wrong but even the local chthonic witch is feeling insecure about herself. Fortunately, she’s invented a potion that can magically tailor clothes, and if she can refine it to be more easily controlled she’ll be able to afford all the more conventional beauty enhancement treatments she wants.

Dennis the Menace, 4/5/25

Usually it’s Dennis who interprets a normal turn of phrase in a way that’s wrong and kind of insulting, and I like his facial expression here in panel two, in which game seems to be recognizing game.

Crankshaft, 4/5/25

I’ve only started revisiting Crankshaft again in the past couple months but I’m sincerely glad to have gotten here in time to see Pam discover that her husband has been draining the family bank accounts to buy bootleg Huckleberry Hound DVDs. Do you think they’re going to divorce over this? I sure hope so!

Luann, 4/5/25

“Oh,” you’ve probably been thinking, “I guess Brad and Toni are doing a whole week at the amusement park, but at least it probably won’t end with them fucking in their car in the parking lot.” You fool. You idiot. You naive simpleton.