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Blondie, 3/8/23

I’m intrigued here by the transition from light to dark between panels two and three — how much time has elapsed, and what conversation, if any, filled it? I’d like to believe that Blondie lay there in silence as Dagwood nattered on about his fantasy fashion empire, only to let loose this sick burn as she was dozing off, just in time to ruin her husband’s whole night.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/8/23

I recently learned that only a few specialized cells actually survive the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, with the entire rest of its body dissolved into goo within the cocoon to serve as food for the growing adult insect. Anyway, just in case you thought you had handle on the kind of awful body horror that would be required to effect Tater’s nightmare vision in reality, I’m here to tell you that you really don’t, actually.

Shoe, 3/8/23

“It was to protect them from the sun and the rain, as well as from all the dust the wagon kicked up as it moved over the plains. They may have lived in olden days, but they were no dummies!”

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Crock, 3/4/23

Hmm, looks like Maggot has bailed on his marital counseling session and now it’s just Grossie pouring her heart out to some dude in a cave. Anyway, do you think when you’re writing a strip like today’s, you pause a moment and think “Wow, I really named a guy ‘Maggot,’ which is also a thing that in some cultures people actually eat, sometimes dipped in chocolate?” Or are you just very, very invested at this point in the idea that “Maggot” is literally a name that a person could have?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/4/23

Speaking of which, to what extent do the writers of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith think of themselves as writing an ongoing satire of poor people living in Appalachia and/or the Ozarks? Or have they mostly forgotten it and are just working with long-memorized character designs and orthographic conventions? Because in the former case today’s strip has the vibe of “Ha ha, I’m really sticking it to these hillbilly moochers” whereas in the latter case it seems like the much gentler and frankly accurate “Ha ha, people want government services but don’t want to pay the taxes that fund them, amiright people????”

Six Chix, 3/4/23

“I also carry them around with me, which forced me to eventually stop reading altogether. Books are very heavy!”

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Gasoline Alley, 2/28/23

One of the fascinating things about the current state of AI is that in science fiction, we imagined that robots would be able to dryly give ultra-correct answers to concrete questions but struggle with nuance, emotion, and (for some reason) contractions, while what we have today are chatbots like ChatGPT that will respond to your questions in fully idiomatic English paragraphs full of confidently delivered vague bullshitting and outright errors. Similarly, I think it’s funny that this is a strip with a talking bear that seems to be fluent in English but gets hung up on the idea that the bear might not understand some pretty basic idioms, when it should be focusing on laying the worldbuilding groundwork for the coming Human-Bear Wars, in which our ursine foes combine their massive strength with their newfound ability to communicate abstract concepts to one another to become an unstoppable fighting force.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/28/23

Remember, Snuffy only recently awakened his father from a Rip Van Winkle-seque sleep that lasted for who knows how many decades, so this punchline is literally true and very poignant. Pappy Smif is a man ripped out of his time! All his contemporaries are long dead, as is every detail of the world he thought he knew.

Dustin, 2/28/23

Hey, were you worried that Dustin’s parents don’t have much of a social life? Well, they do! It involves hanging out with other old people who also hate and resent their children.

Dennis the Menace, 2/28/23

Wait, is it supposed to be somehow menacing when Dennis reveals that his mother thoughtfully tidied up the house before company came over? What … what are we even doing here, guys.