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Beetle Bailey, 2/5/16

I haven’t really tried, but I imagine that it’s nearly impossible to make a pancake that actually looks like anything other than a collection of circles, so I guess if we’re being realistic it’s impressive that Cookie has managed to create pancakes that look even vaguely like Sarge. However, considering that this is the fantasy world of the comics, where imagination and tiny printing sizes in newspapers are the only constraints, for this strip to work I think they should’ve looked … more obviously like Sarge? I think a lot of people are just going to read this as Cookie offering the soldiers slightly malformed pancakes, grinning broadly, and saying “Chew them good!”, which they might find off-putting. I find it off-putting and I know what the joke is supposed to be.

B.C., 2/5/16

Right, right, so, Thor is the brown-haired one! Pretty bittersweet that I’m finally learning to tell these characters apart as they’re killed off one by one.

Dennis the Menace, 2/5/16

“I don’t know if I want to engage in constant low-level violence on a lawless frontier that encroaches on the land of indigenous peoples, or serve as the right-hand man to a genocidal dictator!”

Gasoline Alley, 2/5/16

“My God, not the scrapbook! Pilot, shake loose the ranger and the boy, fly directly down into the inferno, and kill that bear as hard as you need to — the scrapbook must be rescued unharmed!”

Spider-Man, 2/5/16

ANOTHER VICTORY WON BY THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

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Mary Worth, 2/2/16

Huh, Mary’s trip back east seems to be turning into some kind of “let’s revisit old favorites” victory lap. Fresh off of sexually humiliating old pal John Dill (not in the way that he’d prefer), Mary rekindles her old love of ice skating. Let’s not forget that back in 2008, after seeing her old figure skating pal Frank Griffin on TV, she abruptly dropped everything to fly to New York and watch him browbeat his daughter Lynn into skating better. Mary disagreed with Frank’s coaching techniques, because they were making his daughter sad, but it turned out she was actually sad because a boy she liked died and so Mary good-copped her back into competitive skating again and everything was fine (?). Anyway, I certainly hope that as Mary and Olive are out there skating around Rockefeller Plaza, they encounter a deranged Lynn Griffin, doing aimless twirls, still hearing her now-dead father’s enraged shouts in her ears. “This lady doesn’t need my help, does she?” thinks Olive. “Probably not. Probably best to not make eye contact.”

B.C., 2/2/16

One of the interesting things about living in Southern California is that all of the non-religious iconography around Christmas involves festive winter scenes, if by “winter” you mean “winter in the Northern U.S. or Europe.” So much fake snow in so many window displays! That’s considered “real” American winter, even though we’re the most populous state! Factor in the Southwest and Deep South and I wonder if there’s more Americans than not who don’t see white Christmases. Anyway, I’m glad to see B.C., of all strips, acknowledging our glorious diversity of winter climates.

Six Chix, 2/2/16

Here’s a comic about a fish who jumped out of the fishbowl and his friends watched him die in agony and now they’re trying to convince themselves they didn’t see what they just saw. I’m not sure what the “joke” is, per se? Maybe the joke is that anybody thinks there might some escape from the prisons that simultaneously hold us captive and keep us alive.

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Dennis the Menace, 1/31/16

After seeing the graphic in the title panel, I was extremely disappointed that this comic is about an old man grousing about technology until his irritating neighbor shows up. Clearly it should be about Mr. Wilson travelling back in time and preventing Henry and Alice from meeting so Dennis is never born.

Shoe, 1/31/16

Ha ha! It’s funny because a dog beloved by schoolchildren died!

B.C., 1/31/16

Ha ha! It’s funny because they thought their friend had died, but he hadn’t, and they don’t seem to care that much one way or another about it!

Six Chix, 1/31/16

WHY IS THE PIG’S TONGUE HANGING OUT

DO PIGS’ TONGUES REALLY DO THAT

IF SO WHY ISN’T THE OTHER ONE’S TONGUE ALSO HANGING OUT

BY THE WAY DON’T GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH “PIG TONGUE,” THE RESULTS ARE SUPER GROSS