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Beetle Bailey, 4/13/18

Just about every name in Beetle Bailey is extremely on the nose (Corporal Yo! Private Blips! Tech Specialist Chip Gizmo!!!!), with General Halftrack actually having one of the more subtle monikers. The half-track is of course a perfectly legitimate piece of military hardware, but I’ve always assumed that it was short for “half-track mind,” implying that he was losing it, a notion this strip, in which he hears a phrase that reminds him of golf and then wanders over to a tee with a glazed expression on his face, even though he’s miles away from a golf course, sure isn’t going to disabuse anyone of.

Marvin, 4/13/18

Every once in a while I need to check in with Marvin, and myself, to see if maybe I’m exaggerating when I do my running joke about how Marvin is a vile comic strip that constantly and opening makes scat jokes in family newspapers across the country. In today’s strip, Marvin farts and then announces that he’s about to shit his pants, which will be much more disgusting, so, no, I’m still on target, actually.

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Gil Thorp, 4/2/18

Sorry, Marty: while all-high-school-sports radio is more than willing to overlook a little light racism, they cannot abide the ultimate sin in broadcasting, which is accidentally blurting out swear words on the air. Anyway, today’s strip contains one of the greatest things any Gil Thorp can present to us, which is a panel of Marty Moon looking desperately unhappy as he realizes that he is once again the cause of every major disaster in his own life. This is even better than the time he quietly wept in his car after being golf-grifted by a Ben Franklin lookalike, because you can get a much better look at his face. His crumpled, sad, devastated face.

Judge Parker, 4/2/18

Wow, for a strip that has traditionally moved at about the speed of plate tectonics, Judge Parker has leapt from Randy doing some extremely mild flirting to Randy doing some smug and blatantly post-coital smirking in lightning time! Anyway, the important thing is that unlike certain soap opera hunks we could mention, Randy has nipples, thank you very much.

Blondie, 4/2/18

I’ve been a daily reader of Blondie for decades and … I’m pretty much wholly unaware of Alexander’s sports career? I mean, he sometimes wears a letterman jacket but I just assumed that was an ossified visual signifier letting us know he’s in high school rather than some specific reference to his varsity status. The sad truth is that Blondie spends infinitely more time dwelling on Dagwood’s relationship with various fast-food drive through speakerphones than it does on his relationship with his own son — which means that by prompting this chain of thought, today’s strip is really just reaffirming its own thesis, so, well played, Blondie.

The Lockhorns, 4/2/18

Sorry, Loretta, take it from a guy who singularly failed to cash in when he had the chance: the blog-to-book deal hasn’t really been a thing since, like, the mid-late ’00s.

Beetle Bailey, 4/2/18

Beetle definitely murdered someone with that hammer, right?

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Family Circus, 3/16/18

God damn that is one smug looking turtle, you guys. It’s like he’s thinking to himself, “I might’ve been late getting on the ark, but at least I got there, if you follow me? Eh? Eh? Behemoth and leviathan? This guy knows what I’m talking about.”

Beetle Bailey, 3/16/18

I don’t know if that dagger is military issue or if it’s something Sarge ordered from some creepy-ass knife catalog like the ones my elderly neighbor got and used to show to me without me asking or indicating in any way that I wanted to see them, but I love the fact that he’s got what’s clearly meant to be a vicious weapon for close-in combat and using it for an act of joy, which is to say hewing off chunks of a giant sandwich that he’s gorging on continuously over a 24-hour period.

Gil Thorp, 3/16/18

Guys, guys

the social justice teens

are going to defeat Marty Moon

in the marketplace of ideas