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Archive: Beetle Bailey

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Hat + no mask = good; Hat + mask = sometimes bad???

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Dick Tracy, 5/9/18

Oh, I guess I haven’t mentioned that Dick Tracy, as part of its new mission of just being a full-time old-timey comics nostalgia strip, is doing a crossover with the Green Hornet. You might remember that last year he did a crossover with the The Spirit, and while that masked extralegal crimefighter who first appeared more than 70 years ago was a friend and ally to Dick Tracy and his cop pals, the Green Hornet is treated as a criminal and enemy, and there’s probably reasons in the deep lore for that and you know what? I don’t really care what they are! Don’t bother to tell me, because if you do, I probably won’t really retain the information! Mainly what I want to draw attention to in today’s strip is Chief Patton’s dialogue in panel three, because this being Dick Tracy I’m assuming that his informant was a guy named Odd Duck who looks like a duck, with a bill for a mouth and everything.

Beetle Bailey, 5/9/18

You might think today’s Beetle Bailey is a joke about how the ladies shouldn’t have to listen to all the shocking swearing that menfolk do when they’re alone together, but no: the General and his staff were having a highly classified discussion of upcoming military action that junior officers and civilian employees like Blips and Buxley weren’t authorized to hear. The grawlices represent descriptions of the nightmarish consequences of warfare, with gruesome details of carnage far more harrowing than the casual blasphemies that have become a part of the everyday English language.

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More like The Stinker, amiright

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Dennis the Menace, 4/28/18

I was gonna make some crack about Henry taking Dennis all the way to France and how extremely menacing that must have been for literally everybody involved, but then I looked it up and it turns out there are actually tons of casts of The Thinker all over the place, including several in the United States. So I guess the Mitchell men didn’t have to drive very far to look at a great work of art that Dennis interpreted as a guy taking a massive shit, which, for the record and in the interest of full disclosure, is a punchline that I laughed at wholly unironically.

Beetle Bailey, 4/28/17

Can’t wait for General Halftrack’s war crimes trial! It’s gonna be lit.

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Vile infancy and horrifying senescence

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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.