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Arctic Circle, 9/18/24

This strip has been fixated on environmental catastrophe so long it’s jarring to see it suddenly switch gears. Or has it? After all, Oscar, Ed, and Gordo are still standing on their metaphorical corner of the Internet wearing sandwich boards announcing “The End Is Near.” Climate, AI: Tomato, Tomahto. It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure where every path leads to extinction.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/18/24

Hey, Parson, them thar antydepressicant pharmysooticals shore will make the news go down easier!

Mark Trail, 9/18/24

Mark is searching for “Vampire in Malibu” director Wesley Wingit, reputedly holed up in this house full of lions. Very talented lions. They can open a chest freezer; unwrap, thaw, and microwave their meals; and presumably use the litter box, most likely a repurposed swimming pool. If Wesley doesn’t show up, they can probably also direct his next movie, produced by MGM of course.

Judge Parker, 9/18/24

Pity poor Ronnie. To escape her wretched marriage to self-absorbed twit Kat who looks exactly like Neddy, she submits to a doomed roadtrip with self-absorbed twit Neddy who looks exactly like Neddy because she is actually Neddy. In her troubled dreams, Ronnie careers through a mirrored funhouse with infinite Neddies screeching tornadoes of empty yak at her from every side, only to awake soaked in sweat to find yet another goddamn Neddy shaking her shoulder saying, “Hey, I’ve got an idea ….”

Beetle Bailey, 9/18/24

Pity Amos Halftrack. This is as intimate as he will ever be with a woman; this moment will define his life.

—Uncle Lumpy

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith 8/31/24

You know, I’ve been doing this blog for two decades now, and yet somehow until today I’ve never paused to ask myself the question, “I wonder how Snuffy and Loweezy’s sex life is going?” It’s immediately clear that there’s no “good” answer to this — all the possibilities summon up further unpleasant thoughts and imagery, in their own way — but I’m here to tell you that the answer is “not well.” You can understand why Loweezy might have thought that tonight was a night she was going to get lucky: panel one makes it clear that Snuffy wore his extra-tight overalls to flatter his shapely buttocks, although I guess that’s just to entice Parson Tuttle to get wild and crazy and switch over from CBS to NBC tonight.

Mark Trail, 8/31/24

OK, sorry, I’m willing to accept that Mark is going to write a story about a movie director who accidentally trapped himself in his Catalina Island home with a bunch of lions and is even taking Rusty along on the trip, but if there’s one thing you know I won’t stand for, it’s abuse of Los Angeles geography. If you’re driving from LAX to the Catalina ferry terminal in Long Beach, Santa Monica is in the exact opposite direction of where you’re going! You just added at least an hour to your trip, depending on traffic, and there’s always traffic! Rusty needs to be banned from the next three fishing trips, minimum!

Hagar the Horrible, 8/31/24

Now, keep in mind, when Hagar says “epic,” he’s not talking like some 21st century bro; he literally means that his clan’s bard will be composing an epic oral poem about his warband’s voyage to the Kingdom of Mann and the Isles and the strange Brythonic magic they encountered there. The mutilation of Lucky Eddie’s face will be one of the “funny” parts.

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Dick Tracy, 8/28/24

I guess the woman in the final panel is supposed to be looking up at a big screen, but it really looks like she’s rolling her eyes in contempt at this unfolding scenario. “Ugh, the craft is jamming our drones, I told you we needed to fit them with more powerful transmitters, dad, why don’t you ever listen?”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/28/24

It’s sad: under the Affordable Care Act, most health care plans provide free vaccinations and annual checkups, and at any rate the entire population of Hootin’ Holler surely qualifies for Medicaid. But the lack of communication with the outside world means none of them know this, and Doc Pritchart has no fear that a distant government might take notice of his scams, though he clearly has a healthy respect for the violence that might be visited upon him if he violates the local mores. The dentures thing is a whole different story, given that we strangely consider teeth to be an entirely separate realm from the rest of the body in terms of health care and the regulations around it; also, this may be a strike against my “the Smifs are Zoomers” theory.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/28/24

The inevitable failure of the human body, forcing us to abandon the parts of our lives we love the most even as we face years ahead of us until death? Technically a medical issue, so I’ll allow it as fodder for Rex Morgan, M.D.