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Beetle Bailey, 6/24/25

One of my favorite bits of actual Beetle Bailey character evolution over the past few years is Zero going from being a friendly but very stupid farm boy to being a friendly but very stupid farm boy who is also a highly skilled killing machine. Anyway, I obviously really enjoy this strip, in which Zero grins dumbly at the collection of shells he’s amassed. He seems unaware that each of those shells, the byproduct of his expert marksmanship, is the harbinger of one or more awful deaths, but Beetle and Killer know, and are profoundly unsettled.

Herb and Jamaal, 6/24/25

Herb, why are you looking so smug? One of your regulars is complaining that you’re using substandard meat in your tacos! Or maybe using chicken when you advertised beef! The “foul”/”fowl” joke only works in writing, so I’m not really sure whether it’s coming across here! At any rate, you’ve got an unhappy customer and I’m not sure what you think is so darn funny about it!

Mary Worth, 6/24/25

“Her brother seems to be taking care of her … at least that’s the impression I got in the approximately 45 seconds it took for him to lure her out of my apartment. Do you think I should, like, send an email to see how that whole thing is going?”

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Crankshaft, 5/24/25

The wisteria guy from earlier this week is, as Uncle Lumpy remembers so I don’t have to, the former paramour of Lilian’s now-deceased sister Lucy; he used to dance with her at the Wisteria Ballroom, and then set up an overly elaborate proposal scenario that was to take place there that didn’t come off right and therefore their love was thwarted forever, to their mutual despair, which could’ve been avoided if he had been just a little bit normal about the whole thing. Anyway, the lady at the flower shop gave him some wisterias, which he wistfully put on Lucy’s grave, and now, mere minutes later, a maintenance guy is driving by to grab them and put them directly in the garbage. The terrible Funkyverse vibes are back, everybody! They’re back and they’re better than ever!

Luann, 5/24/25

Speaking of terrible vibes, Luann and the weird uptight guy she kissed behind a clipboard exactly once are apparently going to move into a tiny studio apartment together? There’s two ways this could go: the strip could finally approach young people’s sexuality in a straightforward way or it could do a ribald fanfic-style storyline where, uh oh! There’s only one bed!!!! I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which possibility I find more likely.

Gil Thorp, 5/24/25

Hmm, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court ruled that a public high school football coach could lead students in prayer on the 50 yard line after games, but the Milford administration thinks it can stop Coach Hernandez from peacefully using an Ouija board to contact a ghost in a school supply closet? “Lawyer up, coach!” is what the beloved dead “Pop(s)” is urging Luke, as he floats conveniently where Dr. Pearl can’t see him.

Beetle Bailey, 5/24/25

C’mon, man, the Beetle Bailey gang is in the army, and they have their own special forces units, like the Rangers. The joke should’ve been “Maybe I could’ve been an Army Ranger” “You’re more of a bear” and OK now I see why they didn’t go with that one.

Pluggers, 5/24/25

Pluggers are of an age at which they’re more prone to falling, and a fall could result in serious injury. They live in constant fear that such a thing could happen to them or their partners!

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The Phantom, 4/6/25

One thing I respect about the Phantom is that, for a strip that started out with a fairly dubious colonialist attitude, it now makes a good faith effort to imagine what life would be like realistically in Bangalla, a post-colonial African state that balances a modern capital inhabited by a Westernized elite with a large citizen body that still lives more traditional lifestyles. That’s why I’m intrigued by this new storyline, in which a group of Wambesi living in Mawitaan return home to [squints at last panel] [record scratch] THE UNGRAVED? Best case scenario, it’s some nightmare where corpses are strewn about the village; worst case scenario will be a zombie situation that will have me taking back all the stuff I just said about how far this strip has come.

Dustin and Beetle Bailey, 4/6/25

Ah, it’s time for some fun dream sequences starring two of the funnies’ most callow young people! The Dustin one is straightforward enough to parse — Dustin, who lives with the father who hates him, finds himself trapped on a tiny island with him, a horizon that he can never reach visible in every direction as his father keeps demanding he get a job just in time for another general economic collapse. Beetle Bailey is a bit sillier — ha ha, he’s sick of peeling potatoes, so he’s dreaming of Cookie as a giant angry potato! — but I have to admit that the potato-man seems more and more unsettling the more I look it. The way his body is all head, the way his arms apparently connect to his back, the way he waves around a knife that will be used to slice off the skin of his fellow potatoes and, ultimately, himself? … well, it’s an unsettling look into Beetle’s subconscious, I’ll just say that.