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The Lockhorns, 4/22/21

As usual, I admire the craftsmanship that went into today’s Lockhorns. It would be easy to have the panel just consist of Loretta staring dead-eyed at the woman behind the counter, unsure if she’s making a little joke or issuing a serious warning or what, damn it, she just wants to sign up for a class and people seem to like Zumba, maybe some exercise would help pull her out of her decades-deep depression, why does everything have to be a comedy routine around here. But to have that going on in the foreground, while in the background, Leroy is thinking “Oh, ladies in leotards jumping rope and lifting weights in front of a huge window? Don’t mind if I do”? That’s how you know a real professional put this one together.

Dennis the Menace, 4/22/21

This is absolutely not Joey or Dennis’s house, right? Like, they probably don’t even know whose house this is?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/22/21

Weezy’s face in the final panel shows that she knows Snuffy is just joking. He may be generally averse to physical labor, but he never passes up an opportunity to dig a shallow grave for members of the hated Barlow clan who’ve died at Smif hands in the latest backwoods ambush! Plus he absolutely does not give a shit about the environment.

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Dennis the Menace, 4/5/21

I like that these two kids and their moms have similar facial expressions, as if both pairs were mirror images of one another. In particular, I’d like to imagine that, while Dennis is cracking wise about this kid living a life no better than a dog’s, the leashèd child is saying, “Look, mommy, that boy is experiencing freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/5/21

When I first saw this strip today, I assumed that it was maybe the anniversary of the first Mary Worth strip or something and there’d be tributes to our favorite gal all across the King Features comics pages today! But no, apparently all that happened was that someone in the Snuffy Smith creative team thought up this pun and declared “Tarnation, fellers, that there’s good synergy!” (For this bit, I’m assuming that a requirement for working on Snuffy Smith is that you have to talk in the fake and borderline offensive Snuffy Smith hillbilly patois at all times when you’re on the clock.)

Mary Worth, 4/5/21

Anyway, Mary has plenty of time to appear in other comics because, even though we all assumed that this storyline had finally, blessedly reach its natural conclusion and we’d need her back to set up the next one, it turns out that’s not true, at all! In fact, it’s never going to end and this is our hell, just two old people half-heartedly flirting by talking about how great dogs and forgiveness are.

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Blondie, 4/3/21

Not sure why but I’m very fixated on the choice to do a pink-to-blue gradient in the background here. Specifically, I’m very curious as to whether we’re looking at sunrise or sunset. Typically, Dagwood and Mr. Beasley the mailman crash into one another as Dagwood runs out the door in the morning to catch his carpool, but that usually happens because he’s running late, so it seems unlikely that our notorious snoozemeister would be up and around literally at the break of down. Mostly I’m curious as to whether the madness Mr. Beasley is displaying in today’s strip arises from beginning-of-day manic enthusiasm or end-of-day exhaustion verging on psychosis. I’m sure I could comb through hundreds of Blondie strips looking for clues as to the geographic orientation of the Bumstead home to determine whether we’re looking east or west here, but I’m proud to report that I’m not quite at that level of comics obsession.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/3/21

Man, this strip always does its best to extract grim laffs from its characters’ economically desperate situation, but “Snuffy begs Doc Pritchart to freeze his face into immobility with off-label botox, giving him a marginal advantage in the games of chance where the few circulating dollars in Hootin’ Holler are passed back and forth among the town’s impoverished residents” is really on another level.