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Blondie, 3/14/23

Normally, the purpose of Blondie is to deliver laughs to comics lovers everywhere assure its readers, who are on average shockingly old, that their instinctual distrust and loathing of any novel cultural or technical developments from the past three decades are well founded. Unfortunately, today’s strip misses the mark, as pickleball is a trend that is almost entirely driven by Blondie’s core demographic of semi-active seniors. Ironically, this makes the exchange here, in which a couple of fortysomething guys express bewilderment about it, sort of loop around back to making sense again.

Beetle Bailey, 3/14/23

Big news, everyone! The good folks at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC have become aware of the existence of app-based food delivery services! Based on today’s strip, they definitely think that they’re just restaurants that you can use your phone to order food from, but it’s a start.

Hagar the Horrible, 3/14/23

Ha ha, it’s funny because the physical injuries Lucky Eddie has suffered in combat pale in comparison to his mental and spiritual trauma, yet his supposed best friend Hagar is positively gleeful at the thought of sending him back into battle!

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Beetle Bailey, 2/23/23

The joke here is clearly that Otto is imitating Beetle’s typical slothfulness, but wouldn’t it be funny if this were a lead-in to Sarge murdering Beetle, and this is the last thing the title character to this long running comic strip ever sees? Well, “funny” may not be quite the right word, unless you’re like me and have been reading this strip every day for years, waiting desperately for something, anything, to happen in it.

Hagar the Horrible, 2/23/23

Say what you will about Hagar the Horrible, but unlike many gag-a-day strips its team of gag writers works hard to keep track of the lore. Like, Hagar is canonically illiterate, which is why they’re careful to have him say “I was told” in the final panel. Anyway, what do you think the book is? Based on that description and the historical setting, I’m guessing it’s the Bible, in the form of a lovingly illuminated manuscript plundered from an Irish monastery that Hagar and his warriors burned to the ground.

Mary Worth, 2/23/23

“I want to be friends with him … but from a distance! Why can’t he understand that the most precious form of friendship is the kind where you’re never in the same room at the same time, and also you don’t like each other?”

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Mary Worth, 2/20/23

This upcoming court battle is going to settle an important precedent: can legal action be taken against someone for stuff they do in your hallucinations and dreams? Normally this would seem to be a slam dunk to get thrown out of court immediately, but I can see a judge learning about Wilbur’s whole deal and gruffly saying “I’ll allow it,” then saying the same thing when the jury somehow imposes the death penalty.

Beetle Bailey, 2/20/23

Wordle was made public in October 2021, and went viral a couple months later when the ability to turn your results into an emoji grid was added. In other words, Beetle Bailey has name-checked a popular culture thing a mere 14 months after it entered popular culture, which is really shocking for a strip that only started depicting the Army as racially integrated in 1970.

Gil Thorp, 2/20/23

“Kaz leaving was a gut punch for me. Devastating. Something I’ll never get over. My best friend, gone, leaving a hole that can never be filled. Oh, wait, you’re asking about the team? They don’t really give a shit. They’re teenagers! I honestly don’t think they can tell most adults apart.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/20/23

Can you imagine if a guy you’d been seeing casually announced that he’s moving to be closer to you, but then mentions that he’s also doing it to be closer to Buck Wise? That’d be a real emotional roller coaster, and one that by rights ought to end either with a breakup or a written agreement that you never have to be in a room with Buck for more than ten minutes at a time.