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Beetle Bailey, 2/16/14

Today’s Beetle Bailey is certainly one of the more crushingly realistic commentaries on the nature of work I’ve seen in the comics lately. Sarge, standing in for the cheerleaders of the capitalist order who don’t do much manual labor themselves, urges his underlings to think of work as a intrinsically morally uplifting act. Yet in the final panel we can see that the ordinary soldiers aren’t buying this at all. Killer, most optimistic of the bunch, at least imagines that his window-washing duties might lead to a window-washing career that involves a certain degree of specialized skill and, one would hope, cachet; still, it’s not like he can get excited about it. Plato, ever the philosopher, knows that performing an identical act in a different location isn’t really any kind of change at all. Beetle can only visualize his future life as a reeking expanse of garbage, extending endlessly to every horizon. And Zero has the most harrowing vision: he knows that nobody in the private sector will pay him even minimum wage for the menial tasks that he’s only half-mastered, and that he will certainly starve if he can’t elicit sympathy from cruel-faced strangers.

Panel from the Better Half, 2/16/14

“I suppose lips count as raw meat…”

ha ha but it can’t have really said that

“I suppose lips count as raw meat…”

no check again they wouldn’t dare put that in the newspaper

“I suppose lips count as raw meat…”

but but is he talking about my lips everyone has lips oh my god

“I suppose lips count as raw meat…”

[ENDLESS ENDLESS SCREAMING]

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Beetle Bailey, 2/14/14

Kudos to the King Features colorists: this is a joke about how Miss Buxley has placed small pieces of plastic directly onto her eyeballs (already one of the most unnatural acts I can possibly imagine) that are covered with so much filth that her normally blue irises appear to be a sort of mud-brown, and in order to sell it we really need to see those dirty specks in the middle of her wide, terrified eyes. And we do! I also like the way that Killer has suddenly stood upright in disgust between panels. “I, uh, I have to be going now. Hope you don’t go blind!”

Crock, 2/14/14

There’s an obvious horror to final panel in today’s Crock, in which a grinning camel invites us to contemplate the fact that he’s managed, through sheer force of will, to shape the fatty deposit on his back into a grotesque parody of a human heart and then urges us to enjoy “humptine’s day,” something that we might associate with the enjoyable pastime of humping a loved one if not for the profoundly unerotic vision on display. But still, for me the most awful vision here is panel two, as the hump jiggles and throbs and extends, all while this eerie sentient camel maintains unbroken eye contact with us. HAPPY HUMPTINE’S DAY EVERYBODY

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/9/14

Oh hey, remember how Sarah Morgan, who is a child, got a lucrative book deal from a museum for her horsey drawings, but it came so easily to her that she was wracked with self-doubt? Well, just because she may be undergoing some internal self-reassessment doesn’t mean that it’s okay for the people paying her money for a book to assign her an God-damned professional editor to supervise the process just like they would for literally any other writer they publish, including adults who have already written multiple books. Just look at her face in that last panel! You’re dealing with Sarah Morgan, motherfuckers, and her lawyer is going to make sure you regret everything about this decision.

Beetle Bailey, 2/9/14

Speaking of regrets, I sure regret reading this comic, because now I can’t stop thinking about Otto the dog suddenly growing to full human size and asserting his right to bring lady dogs to the barracks, for sex.

Hi and Lois, 2/9/14

Ha ha, an adorable child in a comic is talking about “promoting my brand,” time to break all the computers and move to an island far away!