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Archive: Beetle Bailey

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I’d be pretty depressed listening to “Turkey In The Straw” for ten blocks, I guess

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Heathcliff, 7/15/13

Last week’s Heathcliff fish joke, while well within the expected whimsy-parameters of an inoffensive long-running legacy comic, still adhered to a basic logic, that logic being “cats like stealing fish, to eat.” Today’s panel provides something more in line with the profound weirdness bubbling below the surface of this feature’s modern iteration. Cats like fish, and I suppose cats like “playing with their food,” when their food is alive, but instead here the tenuous conceptual cat-fish connection produced a scenario where Heathcliff has a collection of fish of varying densities that he uses as athletic equipment. How dead are these fish, anyway? Are they still floppy? Do they hit the ball with a meaty smack, or have they started to rot, with contact with any projectile producing a cloud of scattered fish-flesh? Or … maybe, as I imagined last week, we’re meant to interpret the fish’s open eyes as meaning that it is still alive, which makes its bemused facial expression all the more hilarious. “Oh, now the cat’s using me as a baseball bat. That’s fantastic, just fantaaaastic.”

Archie, 7/15/13

The current run of Newspaper Archie Reruns From The Late ’90s Or Maybe The Early ’00s has actually involved a continuing plot that’s running over multiple weeks, which is kind of a new one, though not new in the sense of these strips actually being new, obviously. Anyway, Ronnie’s cruel father made her get a job! Obviously this job just became another venue for her long-running battle with Betty over Archie’s dubious charms. Which I guess is bumming him out? Look at how miserable Archie looks in panel two! I’ve never seen him sadder! And this is before he finds out that Veronica is stalking him with potentially malicious intent. Maybe he’s just sad that she gets access to all that delicious ice cream and he doesn’t?

Beetle Bailey, 7/15/13

As we already know, Camp Swampy exists in an pocket universe in which a single, awful day keeps on happening, forever. Dimly aware of the nightmarish nature of his reality, Beetle is attempting, through this conceptual artwork, to convey the horror of his damned existence.

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“Haha, is that a metaphor, or–” “NO STAY AWAY FOREVER”

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Spider-Man, 6/18/13

True story: Once, when I was living in California, I got the time zone math backwards and called my dad and stepmother at 11 p.m. my time, thinking that it was 8 p.m. on the East Coast when of course it was 2 a.m., and naturally they were less than thrilled about this. I should add that this was after nearly four years of living on the West Coast, so it’s not like I had any kind of excuse. Anyway, what I’m saying is that MJ has been sitting by the phone with no doubt increasing amounts of irritation waiting for Peter call while he’s been screwing around on the beach or whatever, and maybe he shouldn’t sound quite so insufferably smug in panel two? I mean, MJ still probably wouldn’t want him to come back, seeing as she’s already changed the locks on the apartment and had his name taken off their bank accounts, but still, it’s poor form.

Crock, 6/18/13

I love that “HMO” is bolded in the last panel, just so we don’t miss the point. “Ha, this HMO is crueler than I am, and my notorious cruelty is central joke of the strip! HMO! Eh? Social commentary? Right?”

Beetle Bailey, 6/18/13

Specialist Chip Gizmo, the adorably nerdy character introduced to Beetle Bailey in 2002 to bring some techno-savvy to the strip, has built himself a sex robot with metal breasts and sharp, claw-like hands! If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to spend the rest of the day screaming now.

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Honestly more fun than looking at their weirdo faces

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Gil Thorp, 6/4/13

The dreary Gil Thorp spring storyline continues to plod along, with lawyer-spawn/aspiring lawyer Knox Foley (aka “Foley Knox,” aka “How am I supposed to keep track of which is your first name and which is your last name when they both look like last names”) still at the fore. His latest legal shenanigan: trying to convince his aspirational lady love that she should sue the grocery store where she fell and broke her wrist and UGH I can’t even work up the energy to make a joke about this. Mostly I want to point out Foley’s huge hand flopping around in the middle of panel three, like we’re playing in a first-person shooter video game except it’s not a first-person shooter, it’s a first-person poker or grabber or something. Giant meaty freak-hands have been the defining visual element of Gil Thorp since artist Rod Whigham took over in 2008, so it’s great to see a Thorp-flipper literally front and center here, and I wouldn’t be sad if every subsequent panel followed suit.

Beetle Bailey, 6/4/13

Less well known to Beetle Bailey regulars than “Miss Buxley Wednesday” is “The Halftracks loathe each other Saturday,” which today seems to be happening on Tuesday for some reason, maybe because we’ve crossed some sort of nuclear threshold of mutual hatred. Haha, it’s funny because General Halftrack is at the bar drunkenly boasting to his friends that he’s going to leave his wife! His wife is back home, stone cold sober, boasting to nobody in particular that she’s going to leave her husband, and it’s terrifying.

Family Circus, 6/4/13

Oh, man, just look at this guy! Billy’s pretty good at being smug, but this kid’s the master. “Teach me how to be like you, Eric! If I exude epic levels of self-satisfaction, will the ‘law of attraction’ bring me all the tooth-related revenues I deserve?”