Post Content

Hi and Lois, 6/15/20

An aspect of Hi and Lois I’ve always enjoyed is how Irma and Thirsty are the Goofuses to the title couple’s Gallants. Like, they live in the same neighborhood, have the same class positioning (Thirsty and Hi are coworkers at the same generic white-collar office!) but the Thurstons always seem much worse off, financially and, of course, emotionally. Look at Irma! Look at how haggard she looks. “Why do we need wine at the book club?” she’s asking, because she’s clearly been drinking all day.

Beetle Bailey, 6/15/20

Too many people won’t read print media any more and it’s a damn shame! They’re missing out on vital news stories such as “People Like Dogs.” Oh, sorry, you need to phrase that with journalistic objectivity: “People Like Dogs, Some Say”.

Mark Trail, 6/15/20

“Other times they just get straight-up eaten by a bear! Yes, life is a rich tapestry.”

Post Content

Pardon My Planet, 6/13/20

So they’re gonna … dig up this guy? Who’s been dead for more than 20 years? And … they’re gonna make him pay his taxes? As near as I can tell there’s no famous tax cheat with the name and lifespan on that headstone, so maybe this is some sort of name-check of an acquaintance of the cartoonist, whose grieving family surely didn’t deserve this.

Beetle Bailey, 6/13/20

Generally speaking, those “delivery in [X] minutes or your pizza’s free” rebates come out of the driver’s paycheck, so I guess the joke here is that this guy is going to lose money because Beetle is holding him for a while at gunpoint.

Pluggers, 6/13/20

THAT’S RIGHT, MOTHERFUCKERS, PLUGGERS HAVE NEVER DONE A MOMENT’S INTROSPECTION IN THEIR LIVES AND THEY NEVER WILL

Post Content

Folks, before we jump into me making fun of today’s comics, I wanted point you to an article I wrote about comics elsewhere! I talked to a bunch of comics artists about their decision to acknowledge — or ignore — the coronvirus pandemic’s effect on our everday lives, and it turned into a meditation on how time and history intersect with the ephemeral medium of newspaper comics. Check it out over on Polygon!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/11/20

We’re fully a week and a half into this “Rex tells Sarah about how he and June met” storyline and June hasn’t even shown up yet, and are you feeling, bored, huh? Do you think this storyline, and Rex Morgan, M.D., storylines in general, move too slowly? Do you wish they’d just get to the point already? Well, it sounds like you’re a big whiny baby, and not a cool supergenius baby who can figure out how to blackmail people, but a dumb baby who had amnesia and now doesn’t know anything anymore. Do you want to be a dumb baby? Do you? No? Then shut up and let this strip set up “context” for the next six to eight weeks, buddy.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/11/20

OK, there are kids of suffering that awful characters in Funky Winkerbean endure that I like and kinds of suffering that I don’t, and I’ve decided that this is the first kind. Do it, Mason! Watch the special secret tapes that were emotionally intimate and only for Les! Strip-mine his personal agony to make a virtuous but unwatchable movie, which is worse than Les strip-mining it himself to produce three virtuous but unreadable books, for some reason! Use Lisa’s corpse to burnish your millionaire action hero status with some indie cred and further your career! Take no prisoners!

Beetle Bailey, 6/11/20

Plato’s “Science Facts” pamphlet is four pages long, including the cover, which is an otherwise blank page that just has “Science Facts” written on it. This is one the saddest things I’ve ever seen.