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Beetle Bailey, 10/20/09

Look, Sarge, we all know that you’re excited about the promised repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and look forward to the day when you will no longer have to use “cake” as a code word for “sodomy.” But sexual couplings of all possible gender combination will still be banned by Army regulations in any facility where food is served. That’s just a hygiene issue.

Apartment 3-G, 10/20/09

OH MY GOD TOMMIE MAKEOVER STORYLINE! We’ve all been calling for Tommie’s character to be remade; now we’ll get to see her be literally made over by fashion professionals. At the end of the process, she’ll look great, but she’ll still be Tommie, so nobody will like her; a valuable and depressing lesson will be learned by all.

Lockhorns, 10/20/09

I’m not sure what’s more likely here: that Loretta has poisoned Leroy and left his putrefying corpse on the couch as a reminder of her ultimate triumph, or that just died peacefully in his sleep, of ennui, and Loretta’s been so emotionally deadened by years of marriage to him that she hasn’t worked up the energy to call the morgue yet.

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Beetle Bailey, 10/17/09

In the early days of this blog, I poured scorn on Sally Forth for accepting product placement money from progressive rock legends Rush. In the subsequent years, however, as the newspaper business has imploded and the comics industry upon which I have come to rely has been brought ever closer to extinction, I’ve rethought my position on nontraditional revenue-generating strategies. For instance, Beetle Bailey is both a hilarious comic that will provide a much-needed laugh over your morning coffee and a brand that is highly trusted by the coveted 55-to-80 demographic. So, when Sarge admits that his recurrent incontinence causes him to shun social situations or long trips into unfamiliar territories, that would have been a great time to open up a conversation with readers about Detrol, or Lyrinel XL, or, you know, whoever’s willing to pay more. Not only would this have been both lucrative for the holders of the intellectual property rights pertaining to Beetle Bailey and educational for consumers, it also would have replaced a baffling and distasteful punchline about Otto carrying his urine-soaked fire hydrant around with him.

Mark Trail, 10/17/09

Poachy McSideburns is proving himself the master of the at once obvious and profound question about Mark Trail. “How did he stay alive?” touched on matters both biological and philosophical; today’s “Is he a wild-life man?” gets right to the paradox at the heart of this strip. Mark is clean-cut, straight-arrow, not a hair out of place; yet he is more in tune with the natural world than he is with the experiences of those of us living in so-called “civilization.” Is he “man,” or is he “wild-life”? How does he reconcile these two different parts of his essence? We should all offer thanks to our yellow-shirted philosopher of the swamp, before he’s punched into submission.

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Beetle Bailey, 10/13/09

Many people turn to Beetle Bailey in their local newspaper and say “What, they still publish this?” Wait, did I say “many”? Because I meant “all.” Anyway, of those who put forth any more brain effort than that to the matter, many wonder what, exactly, Camp Swampy is for, since none of its soldiers are ever shipped out to fight in America’s various wars, which is just as well because their training regimen seems suspiciously lax. But today’s strip reveals that the sloth and squalor exhibited by the base’s inhabitants are just a cover for its real purpose as the secret research center for the next generation of deadly military technologies. Just look at that blackboard! Numbers … arithmetic … physics … my God, what sort of superbombs are these geniuses working on? Known braniac Plato is of course one of the top researchers, living incognito as an enlisted man to throw off suspicion. It’s too bad Beetle’s got a little too interested in matters above his pay grade, though, because now Plato’s going to have to beat him to death with a broom.

Crankshaft, 10/13/09

Oh, look at these two damned souls! Every non-recurring Crankshaft character must fulfill one of two roles: “Person who makes an unfunny pun or play on words while smirking grotesquely” or “person who responds dubiously to said wordplay.” Like a chorus in a Greek tragedy, they manifest themselves to occasionally offer a commentary on the other fate-crushed denizens of the strip, only to fade back into the wings, ready to appear again later as another smirking/dubiously responding pair.

Apartment 3-G, 10/13/09

Someday, we’ll look back and say, “Gee, Apartment 3-G turned into Aristotle Papagoras Gets So Much Middle-Aged Ass so gradually we barely even noticed it.” Margo gets plenty of facetime in this strip, so I’m willing to allow for her brief absence, but if I were Lu Ann I’d be a little miffed that we’re following the swath Dr. P is cutting through Manhattan’s ladies rather than her tormented family life. Tommie, of course, is glad to avoid to narrative’s glare, because every time she appears in the strip she suffers terribly.

Family Circus, 10/13/09

And that’s when Jeffy learned that he wasn’t the fairest of them all, at all.

Pluggers, 10/13/09

I have to admit that I am charmed by the look of shock on the he-plugger’s face in the background. “My goodness, my poor wife has been possessed by that demon-widget! It’s going to take a lot of snake-handling to fix this!”

Funky Winkerbean, 10/13/09

“Someday soon, because we’re going to be in the hospital, because of illness. It could happen at any time! Cancer! Hospital! Cancer death hospital death death death!”