Archive: Beetle Bailey

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Spider-Man, 4/23/13

A long-running and beloved franchise like Spider-Man is often caught in a dilemma of its own success: how can it keep topping itself? For instance, Spider-Man, a heroic crime fighter with strength and powers beyond that of ordinary humans, has in the past been disabled by ordinary gangster who hit him in the back of the head with a club and a falling brick that accidentally fell on his head. What storyline could be more exciting, more thrilling than this? Today we have the answer: Spider-Man knocking himself unconscious by accidentally backing into a pipe. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN!!!!! His only weakness is the one weakness he shares with just about everybody: a violent blow to the head.

Judge Parker, 4/23/13

Judge Parker has set up one a though experiment: is there an investment so risky and bone-headed that even a member of the Spencer-Driver clan could lose money on it? Neddy has written a $60,000 check to her new friends, do-gooders who build water filtration systems for developing nations, with the promise that they’ll literally pay her back double as soon as they sign some deal with the U.N. It’s all right there in a contract that one of said friends drew up! Will Neddy finally feel the shame of financial failure? (Haha, of course not, probably they’ll pay her back triple instead of double, just because.)

Beetle Bailey, 4/23/13

Oh, look, Beetle Bailey is taking a day off from its usual semi-senile military antics to present you with the most horrifying thing you’ve ever seen! Haha, are you tired of dry, lifeless hamburgers, Sarge? Why not enjoy this burger? It’s made up of flesh that’s been shredded into innumerable tendrils by an enormous industrial meat grinder; yet somehow, impossibly, that flesh is still alive, still moving, those tendrils writhing and squirming. The abomination has no eyes, so it cannot see, yet somehow it still senses the presence of another living thing, and so it drags itself impossibly across the plate, leaving an oozing trail of blood behind. It moves ever so slowly, and Sarge is paralyzed in terror as it twitches towards him. It hungers, he knows; it hungers for revenge, and to feed. He feels the clammy touch as the leading edge of this pulsating meat-mass touches his hand. He wants to run, wants to scream. But he cannot.

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Family Circus, 3/17/13

I’m having fun trying to parse out Grandma’s relgio-moral philosophy from these three quotes. Here’s what I got: There is a creator God; sins can be forgiven, so long as you sincerely repent; but if you die unrepentant, there’s no purgatory or similar chance for forgiveness, so you’d better get your soul in order as if each moment could be your last. Do I have this right? I live it for wiser folk to figure out where she lies on the spectrum of Christian theology, but I do want to point out the hilarious middle panel, in which everyone was enjoying themselves watching basketball until she wandered in with dark warnings about the fact that death looms over us all, constantly.

Spider-Man, 3/17/13

So, why does Spider-Man even bother with a secret identity, anyway? Yeah, Peter, you worry about making noise while you climb up the side of a building, unmasked, in broad daylight, in order to get around an extremely minor inconvenience.

Panels from Beetle Bailey, 3/17/13

Beetle Bailey’s attempts to be sexy are exactly as misguided and off-putting as Beetle Bailey’s attempts to be funny.

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Spider-Man, 3/8/13

Haha, panel one’s Depressed Scientist Guy With Mustache is my new all-time favorite ancillary Newspaper Spider-Man character! “Man, I thought getting off the publish-or-perish treadmill of academia would be better for my working conditions and mental health, but this is terrible. Doesn’t this oaf know you can’t hurry science? And what about my bonus? I was promised bonuses for private sector work!” Meanwhile, one of Kingpin’s lackeys is already ghostwriting Faster! Work Faster!: Leadership Strategies From America’s Most Innovative Supervillain, which will become a #1 best seller at airport bookstores nationwide.

Beetle Bailey, 3/8/13

The Halftracks don’t just live forever locked in an awful, passive-aggressive struggle with each other that neither can win or even enjoy! They also live in their own filth.