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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/29/23

You might think that the inhabitants of Hootin’ Holler would object to the fact their only clergyman is a grifter and fraud. But in truth, for these rural folk, the niceties of organized religion are of little interest, as their spiritual world is dominated by essentially pagan beliefs in signs given by nature and the practice of folk magic.

Dennis the Menace, 5/29/23

That’s not to give followers of monotheistic creeds too much credit, of course; many, like Dennis, will menace generations of sophisticated theologians by simply treating God as a source of apotropaic power, a shortcut to get out of a bind rather than a mystery to contemplate.

Blondie, 5/29/23

Speaking of mysteries, do you think Dagwood has lied to these kids and told him that he’s a combat veteran, so they’re leaving him alone to give him time to contemplate his fallen comrades? Or is their attitude just something like “Well, I guess he respects the troops, so we won’t fuck with him and make his life miserable … today, anyway.”

Shoe, 5/29/23

CONFIRMED: traitors to birdkind in the Shoe universe are punished by ritual execution and cannibalism.

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Mary Worth, 5/16/23

Look, I’m a guy who likes to eat out, and LA has an great food scene with amazing high- and low-end restaurants, but definitely at the places I go to regularly, I have one or maybe two go-to dishes, because … I dunno, they’re good! I already know they’re good! Why would I get the thing that may not be good, when there’s something I already like? Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that you either die a hero or live long enough to find Mary Worth relatable. Also, are they stretching out the “Mary and Jeff go on a date” transition between storylines into a second week? Whatever, who cares, this is representation for me, as established.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/16/23

Do I want to keep making jokes about the obvious desperate poverty that the residents of Hootin’ Holler suffer in? I’m ambivalent about it, but when they keep doing strips about things like people stealing badly needed useful tools from their own children just for a few dollars, it’s pretty hard not to.

Daddy Daze, 5/16/23

OK, we’ve all just sort of accepted that the bit of Daddy Daze is that the Daddy Daze daddy pretends that the Daddy Daze baby can talk, but I think we should draw the line at the Daddy Daze daddy pretending that the Daddy Daze baby can write.

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Six Chix, 5/11/23

So the thing about “sudden,” as a noun, is that it has completely fallen out of use in English outside the set phrase “all of a sudden,” and even when it was in use there wasn’t any particularly strong syntactical or grammatical reason why it took an indefinite article in that phrase rather than a definite one, so it’s pretty natural for modern-day speakers to start reanalyzing and rearranging the phrase, and as long as people know what you mean it’s hard to say you’re doing it “wrong.” Still, some people care a lot about being right in linguistic matters; I found this out the hard way when I got into a discussion on the comments of this very blog in which I pointed out that “none” is not a contraction for “not one” and has always been used in both the singular and plural, with recorded uses of “none are” going back to Chaucer, and this caused one commenter to melt down at me and then quit the site altogether. I have my own odd things I’m overly attached to, of course, but at least none of them have me visualizing myself as an angry pulsing green blob holding the line against a bunch of purple blobs that look pretty chill, honestly.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/11/23

Now I’m imagining the elaborate beehive coif Snuffy had to create to fit his new hair under his hat so that nobody could catch even a glimpse of it while he dashed from his home to this cave, presumably so he wasn’t immediately burned at the stake for engaging in witchcraft. Granny Creeps is powerful enough, or helps enough leading citizens of the Holler with her potions, to avoid that fate herself, but a local layabout and troublemaker like Snuffy is the sort of person who might be made an example of.

Mary Worth, 5/11/23

There’s not a lot about Dr. Jeff I find particularly worthy of praise or envy, but despite being a core Mary Worth character he seems to not put a ton of effort into keeping up with Wilbur’s sex life, and you have to respect that.