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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/9/21

We all know that Snuffy Smith lives by the simple and brutal code of Hootin’ Holler, where clan feuds are passed down from generation to generation, their origins long forgotten. Still, today’s strip, in which he gleefully celebrates that he has won in the only way that matters — by outliving his enemies, by at least a say — is particularly grim.

Family Circus, 10/9/21

Meanwhile, this one’s aiming for grim, but I’m not buying it. Sorry, Billy, you will never achieve true goth energy, no matter how much you try!

Pluggers, 10/9/21

Everyone else in a plugger’s life — his wife, his children, his parents — has let him down at one point or another. They never have his back. They never see him for who he really is. This inanimate piece of wood, on the other hand? Well, it can’t really meet his emotional needs either. But at least he can bite it.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/3/21

For a brief moment, Snuffy realizes that he’s harvesting worms that he’ll use to catch fish that he’ll presumably eat, which is a little too close to productive economic activity for comfort! Fortunately, he soon turns the whole exercise into yet another opportunity to further drain his household’s rapidly diminishing resources, which is much more his speed.

Dustin, 10/3/21

I’ve gotta say, I do enjoy the few Dustins that don’t focus on the strip’s generation-war shtick. Today there’s no hint of conflict between Dustin and his dad, just a young man giving in to heavy-lidded bliss at the thought that soon he’ll be devoured by this pack of hungry raccoons and all his troubles will be over.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 10/3/21

Leroy retreats to his mind palace, imagining watching the news with his wife and seeing yet another coastal city flooded by a category 5 Hurricane Loretta, the fifth storm with that name this year. “That’s what the mall looks like when you’re done with it,” he says, as scenes of ruined homes and stores flash on the screen. And she can’t do anything about it! It’s the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, that’s naming them, not him!

Panel from Slylock Fox, 10/3/21

I’m sorry, Cassandra is a cat burglar and also an actual cat, so no, I don’t think she’s going to sheepishly reappear in the lobby once she realizes she got in an elevator that only goes up. She’ll be climbing down the side of the building within minutes, or maybe just leaping from rooftop to rooftop to make her escape. The only “error” she’s made is getting those severe bangs.

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Between Friends, 9/22/21

I’ve been reading and very occasionally commenting on Between Friends for a while now, and I absolutely get and accept that the titular “friends” are all women, and their jobs are extremely ill-defined white collar work of some kind, so I definitely shouldn’t expect to know what their husbands/boyfriends, who are definitely the strip’s supporting characters, do for a living. And yet I could not help but be very intrigued by what appears very much to be a coffin behind Susan’s husband in the background of panel one. That looks a lot like a coffin, right? Or, it could be something else (a closed grill, maybe?) and the colorist just thought it looked like a coffin, possibly because Susan’s husband is wearing a black suit with a pocket square and if he’s not an undertaker but just some guy standing near a grill outside during the workday, well, why is he dressed like that? Anyway, I certainly hope there’s a grieving family standing just out of frame, staring at him in increasing agitation as he loudly makes his evening plans.

Gil Thorp, 9/22/21

Good lord, Heather, reporting on Milford games on Twitter so that people can read about them as they happen instead of waiting for tomorrow’s afternoon edition to arrive on their doorstep is one thing, but are you really walking away from Coach Thorp while he’s mid-sentence to talk to one of the children who play for him? Looks like you’re about to make a powerful enemy (Coach Thorp), and just as the Hapsburgs made the seemingly unthinkable decision to ally with Bourbon France in the aftermath of the War of the Austrian Succession, so to will Gil make peace with his hereditary enemy (Marty Moon) to restore the high school sports-local media balance of power.

Barney Google, 9/22/21

Just a reminder that, canonically, Snuffy’s dad was asleep for decades (?) in the woods in a comical Rip Van Winkle-style situation, so who even knows what’s going on inside his body! Pretty weird stuff, I bet!