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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/11/13

Happy Veterans Day, everybody, and let us never forget that once, long ago, Private Snuffy Smith helped defend the free world from the menace of fascism, as depicted in live action films in which Snuffy was played by little person Bud Duncan wearing a shockingly true-to-cartoon fake nose:

A few years back I linked to 1942’s Private Snuffy Smith, in which Snuffy enlists in the army in order to avoid trouble with the revenuers. In the intervening time, the sequel to that film, the Holy Grail of Snuffiana, has been uploaded to YouTube, the film with the most amazing title of any movie ever made: Hillbilly Blitzkrieg.

The plot involves Nazi spies trying to steal Snuffy’s moonshine formula and use it for rocket fuel, I guess? I only made it through about three minutes of it! Let me know what I missed, if anything.

Mary Worth, 11/11/13

“Neither would I. If not for me, I wouldn’t be here today. I create myself whole from within myself. I am the alpha and omega and nobody, least of all me, can escape me.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/11/13

Guys, were you worried that the Morgans might not be extracting maximum revenue from Sarah’s drawings of horsies? Well, their highly compensated lawyer will see about that.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/13/13 (panels)

What is the relationship between art and reality — among the dreamer, the dream, and the dreamed? Magritte gives us one viewpoint, Snuffy Smith another.

Snuffy reveals how the artist not only creates a work but selects its audience, source of his reputation and claims to authenticity. He is his own best example: once a mere usurper in Barney Google’s strip, he now asserts his own membership in the very elites who read his Sunday “throwaway panels” in their expansive flatlander newspapers or on high-falutin’ electronic devices. With a delicate hanky-dab at his nose, he rises — refined and redefined, “Snuffy” no more!

Judge Parker, 10/13/13 (panel)

Boy, this lady sure hates hats, doesn’t she?

Beetle Bailey, 10/13/13

You know, there are plenty of attractive and willing human partners around, like Sarge’s Sgt. Louise Lugg, Beetle’s Miss Buxley, and Killer’s groupies, but it’s all surrogates with these guys: robots, trees, and again with Beetle’s beloved pillow here. I’m just saying that’s kind of messed up.

Mary Worth, 10/13/13 (panel)

We had to wait a long time to see Mary’s head impaled on a fish, but I think we can all agree it was worth it.

Mutts, 10/13/13

Mooch ignores the comics’ prohibition of “FLICK” to imply that Earl has sex with his own parasites.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Spider-Man, 10/2/13

You can tell that Spidey’s become fully part of Tarantula’s desperate guerrilla army because he’s willing to participate in ethically dubious shenanigans like this. Sure, war is hell, and fake surrenders can help you achieve tactical victories, but at what cost? Once El Condor’s soldiers stop respecting the white flag of truce for their own safety, the bloody insurgency will reach truly gruesome levels of carnage.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/2/13

Lukey looks rightfully horrified as he realizes that the time is quickly approaching for his Reaping, the day when the inhabitants of this desperately poor community decide that he’s not worth keeping alive anymore and ritually tear him to shreds so they can put his remains to whatever use they can. That tongue depressor the doctor’s using? It’s made out of human bone!

Dennis the Menace, 10/2/13

So Dennis heard a new word in school today, but instead of paying the extremely minimal amount of attention necessary to the linguistic context to try to figure out what it meant, he instead came up with an interpretation that would lay the groundwork for an awkward and vaguely sexually charged question for his mother and called it a day. Pretty menacing, all in all!

Marvin, 10/2/13

Never let it be said that Marvin isn’t innovative! It’s not just a strip about urine and feces, you see. Sometimes it’s about vomit! Copious amounts of vomit! Foul-smelling hot dog vomit, washing over people and furniture like an endless flood, like a natural disaster. Ha ha, the vomiting baby’s name was “Hurly,” you see, because of vomit!