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Beetle Bailey, 7/2/25

Longtime readers know that one of my minor Beetle Bailey fixations is that Miss Buxley’s classic little black dress is actually a little red dress; it’s just that the daily strips depict black and white versions of underlying platonic forms that are in color, and red is depicted as black in that context, but then the strips are colored in by other hands later in the manufacturing chain, which screws up the whole system because the black apparently can’t be made red at that point. Or it least it couldn’t be made red, until today! Finally, Adobe Photoshop fill tool technology has advanced to the point where it can make the black area of a .tiff file red. Unfortunately it seems to screw up a bunch of other stuff, like make the text too small for the word bubbles and also kind of fuck up Miss Buxley’s face. It looks off, right? Is this AI? Will Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC be the first comics conglomerate to replace its human artists with AI? Anyway, I was going to do a riff here about the fact that “going pillow shopping” clearly seems like it should be a sex thing, but I got distracted by all this other stuff.

Bizarro, 7/2/25

Look, man, I love dogs. Huge fan of dogs. But the truth is, no dog, not even a highly trained one, would give even a moment’s thought to a beautiful sunset vista. This guy should be getting a phone call describing the incredible smells coming off a huge pile of turds that the dog found.

Hi and Lois, 7/2/25

Hey, Trixie, the Sun is an enormous ball of exploding hydrogen and helium more than 800,000 miles in diameter, and its motion is mostly determined by the gravitational forces of our galaxy, which contains millions of stars like it. You, on the other hand, are a baby with no job or anything else that imposes any kind of schedule on your days, so maybe you should be willing to accommodate your supposed “best friend.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/2/25

Aww, isn’t that nice? But seriously, insulin deliveries to Hootin’ Holler are intermittent at best, which is a big problem considering the community’s higher-than-average incidence of diabetes.

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The Lockhorns, 6/25/25

I really like the way Leroy is clutching his chest dramatically here. I imagine he already did this routine inside at the concession stand cash register, and Loretta is extremely over it, but now some new people have come along upon whom he can inflict this bit. Or, perhaps even better, he’s doing it specifically because he knows it will humiliate Loretta by forcing her to explain the bit to these people, whom I assume to be total strangers to the Lockhorns. I truly will never tire of analyzing in minute detail the passive aggressive antics that these two will never tire of subjecting each other to.

Luann, 6/25/25

Man, remember when this strip’s ribaldry was over-the-top and grotesque? Now nobody involved can seem to muster up any energy as they talk about handling buns and weenies or biting into dripping, phallic breakfast food or whatnot. Sad!

Beetle Bailey, 6/25/25

Remember when “Miss Buxley Wednesday” was a fun, wholesome opportunity to see an old man (audience stand-in) ogling his sexy secretary? Now it’s just women callously announcing that their professional and economic futures are secure while an old man (audience stand-in) weeps about the fact that society has abandoned him. Maybe political correctness has gone too far?

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Beetle Bailey, 6/24/25

One of my favorite bits of actual Beetle Bailey character evolution over the past few years is Zero going from being a friendly but very stupid farm boy to being a friendly but very stupid farm boy who is also a highly skilled killing machine. Anyway, I obviously really enjoy this strip, in which Zero grins dumbly at the collection of shells he’s amassed. He seems unaware that each of those shells, the byproduct of his expert marksmanship, is the harbinger of one or more awful deaths, but Beetle and Killer know, and are profoundly unsettled.

Herb and Jamaal, 6/24/25

Herb, why are you looking so smug? One of your regulars is complaining that you’re using substandard meat in your tacos! Or maybe using chicken when you advertised beef! The “foul”/”fowl” joke only works in writing, so I’m not really sure whether it’s coming across here! At any rate, you’ve got an unhappy customer and I’m not sure what you think is so darn funny about it!

Mary Worth, 6/24/25

“Her brother seems to be taking care of her … at least that’s the impression I got in the approximately 45 seconds it took for him to lure her out of my apartment. Do you think I should, like, send an email to see how that whole thing is going?”