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Archive: Beetle Bailey

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Bench II: Return to the Bench

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Beetle Bailey, 11/3/24

Every once in a while, you do have to wonder how much anyone at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC knows about the actual U.S. military and how it works. Like, do you think that they’re vaguely aware that’s there’s a football team called “Army,” but don’t know that it’s the college team fielded by the U.S. Military Academy and assume instead that its players are just, like, enlisted men chosen at random? Anyway, today our Camp Swampy heroes are playing against a team [squints at helmets] comprised of literal pirates, or maybe representing Death itself.

Family Circus, 11/3/24

Say what you will about today’s Tiktok-addled children, but they would not get distracted from a wholesome family game by some dumb hobo clown on TV and then sit there watching him enraptured for a full minute. Kids simply don’t have that kind of attention span anymore.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/3/24

Noooo, Wanda, be careful, Truck is trying to pull you into his bench sitting based lifestyle, don’t fall for it

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Century Boulevard … we love it

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Blondie, 11/2/24

The Blondie creative team is usually very locked in to whatever big calendar full of real and fake holidays that’s clearly hanging up in the writer’s room, so today’s misstep is actually kind of surprising to me. Sure, it was possible, weeks ago when this strip was written, that game six of the World Series might’ve been played on November 1, but it was also possible that one of the teams would wrap it up in five games or less, as one of them in fact did (go Dodgers!). Anyway, I get why you’d risk it though, the glaring error is absolutely worth it to deliver this tight, flawless joke about a mailman streaming the baseball game from the night before, so his trainee has to talk to one of the mail route customers, like the regular guy usually does, about something that we don’t need to bother explaining, you know, the usual customer-mailman conversations we all know and love and have every day.

Marvin, 11/2/24

Of the weird holdover jokes from an entirely different era of gender relations that routinely pop up in newspaper comics, I have to say that “haha, it’s women’s job to cook but this particular woman is really bad at it!” are my absolute least favorite. The particular woman in question could be the speaking character’s mother, wife, or (as in this case) daughter, each possibility carrying with it its own specific unpleasant vibe. That said, I do think today’s Marvin is kind of funny because usually you think of “runing your appetite” as something you do with snacking, but Roy is just straight-up eating a whole actual meal here. Like he knows Jenny’s cooking is terrible, he wants no part of it, and he’s just made his own dinner early, because he’s fully self-sufficient.

Beetle Bailey, 11/2/24

Some days I think I’ve left the snickering sexual innuendo I was prone to in this blog’s early days behind, but then I encounter a strip like “Lt. Fuzz decides to horn in on General Halftrack’s threesome,” sigh heavily, and realize I will simply not be able to help myself. Anyway, here’s today’s Beetle Bailey, in which Lt. Fuzz decides to horn in on General Halftrack’s threesome.

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Wilbumiliation

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Mary Worth, 11/1/24

Aww, who came to Dr. Ed and Estelle’s last-minute, let’s-make-it-legal-before-we-have-another-dumb-fight wedding? Well, from right, we have: Saul and Eve (intense dog owners, probably repeat customers at Dr. Ed’s clinic due to obsessive worrying over their pets’ health), Dr. Ed’s former lover Shiela, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (officiant), Mary, some guy (maybe supposed to be Dr. Jeff except his temples aren’t grey and also his nose and chin look wrong???), and, of course, Wilbur, making his second appearance at an ex’s wedding in as many years. It’s good that this is happening to him! I think he should continue to suffer further humiliation until he’s learned his lesson (he never will). Maybe he’ll get an invite from Fabiana when she finally marries her cousin, dare to dream!

Crock, 11/1/24

I dunno, maybe I’m reading too much into a kind of nothing joke, but I feel like at least a little of the implication here is that the wife is going to be eating this dinner too, right? “Don’t eat the dinner, honey … the dinner is me … the dinner is me” (she’ll never hear it because nobody listens to their voice mail anymore, haha kids today am I right)

Beetle Bailey, 11/1/24

“Do the creators of Beetle Bailey know what ‘puppy play’ is?” is the sort of question that I will never, ever want to actually learn the answer to but also will never, ever be able to stop thinking about.