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Beetle Bailey, 11/4/14

You know, the Military-Themed Laffs division of Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC is pretty fortunate in that they have a lot of ancillary characters to mine for jokes. Most were added in fumbling attempts to remain socially relevant (e.g., when it became impossible to ignore the existence of computers or various ethnic groups), but some date back to the early days of the strip, and all are available to step in when the prospect of another joke about how Sarge likes beating Beetle into a gelatinous ovoid becomes unbearable. Which is a roundabout way of saying that, sure, let’s hear more from Chaplain Staneglass! Ha ha, his name is funny because many churches have so-called “stained-glass” windows, you see. Anyhoo, the good Chaplain was recently seen offering a dubious lack of theological certainty to a questioning soul, and today’s he just straight-up dozing off in the mess hall. I kind of wish this was a Sunday strip so we could see him slowly tip over forward, panel after panel, until eventually he’s face down in the peas, snoring out bits of semi-conscious prayer.

Apartment 3-G, 11/4/14

The most hilarious Apartment 3-G art/writing mismatch in recent memory continues! The Myriad Restaurant Group, the current owners of the Tribeca Grill, recognized that exposed brick is played out as an aesthetic, and have moved in an innovative new direction, in which patrons will dine amongst motel-quality art and dingy refrigerators that look like they’ve been in your shabby apartment since the late 1970s. All drinks will be brought to your table in exquisitely hand-crafted replica milk cartons!

B.C., 11/4/14

OK, B.C., this may be a genuinely funny joke, but that doesn’t mean that you can just repeat it every nine years. I AM ALWAYS WATCHING YOU, B.C.

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Mark Trail, 10/28/14

So here’s a little mystery for you: last week when Bill proposed to send Mark and his family into the Great Dismal Swamp, the nefarious chemical company involved was called “Petroxx Chemical,” which name I worked into a joke I was a little too inordinately proud of. But not long after the post went up, an anonymous commenter pointed out that in version online the company’s name had changed to “Riverway Chemical”; this is the name they seem to be going with now, and Mark is going out of his way to point out that this Riverway Chemical outfit is totally one of the good industrial mining concerns. Did just the name “Petroxx Chemical” offend some powerful interests? Is this storyline just going to become increasingly neutered, with any evidence that Mark cares at all about the environment vanished down some Stalinist memory hole? When we look at the strips from these dates three weeks from now, will Mark and Doc be talking about how titanium dioxide keeps a fish’s scales soft and supple?

Rusty, meanwhile, doesn’t care about any of this fancy tree-hugger talk. Mostly he wants to know: is this swamp full of dangerous reptiles that will kill and eat him? Will his pointless existence finally be snuffed out by blessed oblivion? Will he at last be able to contribute something to the world, as food in a gator’s belly?

Beetle Bailey, 10/28/14

It may sound like Miss Buxley is just babbling nonsense in panel three, but she’s probably just killing time so that the undercover EEOC agent at the next table can gather enough corroborating evidence about this mandatory lunch date with her boss, during which he’s already ordered that work matters not be discussed.

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Beetle Bailey, 10/25/14

Not sure what denomination Chaplain Staneglass is supposed to be, but mainstream Christian theology has had a ready answer to this one since at least Aquinas and probably Augustine. The short version is that God is eternal and exists outside of time as we understand it — indeed, the linear progression of time, including the concept of cause and effect, is part of His creation, so it doesn’t really make sense to talk about Him being created by anyone or anything. You can find this logic varying degrees of satisfying based on your own personal beliefs, but the idea that a clergyman would respond to a sincere question about it with “WELP ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” makes me a little depressed about the quality of ministry available to our soldiers and/or cartoonists, and I’m an atheist.

Six Chix, 10/25/14

You can see this as a cartoon about a dad being a sullen dick about doing a joint Halloween costume with his daughter, but I prefer to interpret it as a clever little girl doing the best she can to work with the requirements of an unusual court order.