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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/25/20

I think we’ve hit the uncanny valley segment of “comics do coronavirus,” where strips start throwing in catchphrases increasingly prevalent in public discourse to generate “ah ha, I recognize that” laugh-like reactions without actually trying to grapple with actual context these phrases come from. Thus you get Snuffy joking about the “stimulus package” the U.S. government is putting together to counteract the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic without anyone in Hootin’ Holler actually changing their behavior in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, Snuffy and his neighbors are the last people you’d expect to submit to the revenooers’ orders on how they should live their lives, but it’s also possible that they’re safe because the government long ago simply walled Hootin’ Holler off from the rest of the country, for their protection and for ours.

Daddy Daze, 4/25/20

I know I’ve already discussed my theory that the Daddy Daze coffeeshop strips are just updated versions of the bar strips in every other syndicated newspaper comic. Today’s offering features a very despondent Daddy Daze Daddy’s Goth Twin, guzzling his coffee as he contemplates a parenting style that, it seems clear, has already ruined his child’s life, and I’m basically assuming at this point that these strips were all drawn to take place in a bar and then forcibly changed to a coffee shop by editorial intervention.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/25/20

“Finally! White people are back on top in this town! White people with normal names, like ‘Mason Jarre!’”

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Crankshaft, 4/22/20

Crankshaft is once again returning to a favorite (?) theme, “Boy, people at Book Fairs sure are annoying, aren’t they?” Annoying enough to … murder? Maybe, if Lillian’s book title is any indication! Why would you antagonize someone at a book fair who specifically wrote about murdering people at book fairs? Move along to the next table, annoying lady, before it’s too late for you!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/22/20

But boys! Without this moment of mind-shattering terror you can never go through the transformation that causes you to become the Bat-Man! You’re abandoning your project just when you’re at the precipice of the psychological shift crucial to the character you’re trying to emulate! I sure hope you haven’t gone to all the trouble of having your parents murdered in front of you only to back out of this now!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/17/20

I’m sure the Smifs and the Barlows could rattle off a list of slights and transgressions going back generations that have kept their blood feud alive, but today’s strip shows the real underlying structural motivation behind it: a battle over access to scarce resources.

Mary Worth, 4/17/20

Sure, Hugo is brusquely rejecting Dawn’s suggestion to look at a Star Wars … exhibit? movie? poster? … which is I guess a thing Dawn likes now, and this is a point against him in her mental calculus. But I think he’s actually growing as person: this was a perfect opportunity for him to go on at great length at how much better Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets was than any American sci-fi flick, but he chose not to.

Beetle Bailey, 4/17/20

As the creator of a long-running entertainment website, I understand the tension between going to the well of my classic running bits that regular fans love and doing jokes don’t require backstory so I can hook in potential new readers; newspaper comics face the same dilemma. Today’s Beetle Bailey presents a double face as a result. Longtime strip readers know that the joke here is about the fact that the General and his wife hate each other, and one thing she particularly hates is him staying out late at bars. But if you just came into this strip cold, with no background on the characters, there would really be one logical and obvious way to interpret this punchline: that the General, despite being weary of America’s endless wars, is about to go home, pick up the phone, and start giving the orders that will set yet another one in motion. You can see in his eyes that the thought of sending the ill-prepared men of Camp Swampy into combat is killing a part of his soul, but he has his orders and sees no way out.