The Comics Curmudgeon

Main Menu

Social Media

Archive: Beetle Bailey

Comments are closed

Is Dawn going to stop talking long enough to choke down that muffin

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 8/16/22

Feel like it’s been a long time since I saw someone actually smoking a tobacco cigarette in a newspaper comic strip, and while I hadn’t thought about it much, I think I unconsciously assumed there was some kind of Hayes Code-style agreement that we wouldn’t depict such a thing in a medium intended for children. But maybe I’m wrong about that, or maybe there was a collective recognition over at Beetle Bailey central that nobody cares anymore and definitely no children are reading Beetle Bailey, so why not be free, for certain limited definitions of “being free,” which is to say free to depict Rocky, the camp’s resident “bad boy” (non-sexual division), enjoying a cigarette held at arm’s length and Beetle being weirdly passive aggressive about it.

Mary Worth, 8/16/22

Part of being a true alpha predator like Mary is knowing when to sit back and let your prey come to you. Dawn is wasting absolutely no time in flinging herself emotionally prostate at Mary’s feet, and Mary, as you can see in panel two, is sitting absolutely still, with a fully neutral facial expression, to allow the maximum emotional purging to take place on its own before the meddling process begins. I assume she’s about to lift that lemonade to her lips and make the quietest sip humanly possible as Dawn spirals into a vivid description of her hateful emotional inheritance.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/16/22

Oh, sorry, I guess we’re gonna be spending this week doing a wellness check on all of this strip’s elderly characters. How is this dynamic duo of pinball maniacs doing? Well, I guess I hope to one day live to be quite old, and maybe by that time I’ll have earned the right to answer innocent conversation starters like “How’s it goin’, pop?” with musings on my own mortality that are faux cheery and also reveal that I don’t really understand how aging and dying works.

Comments are closed

They won’t even release the podcast until Marty nails down another mattress ad

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 8/12/22

Wow, we all spent a lot of time making fun Beetle Bailey as a “lazy bum” and a “moron” and a “disgrace to the U.S. military,” but it turns out he’s quite capable of using his military training to quickly and accurately assess threats to unit’s current position. Unfortunately, his “unit” consists of three guys in a trench with two WWI-era rifles between them and they’re about to be annihilated by artillery fire, but still, it’s nice to know he’s not the dummy we all thought he was.

Gil Thorp, 8/12/22

I apologize for my earlier misstatement: Marty Moon doesn’t have a radio show, he has a podcast, which he records at a radio station, but still: he’s moved away from tired, legacy media like radio waves and is now in tune with what the hip kids are into with their iPhones and cyberspace and stuff, because he is a media leader who keeps up with the times. Either that or WDIG won’t let him do live on-air stuff anymore, ever since “the incident.”

Marvin, 8/12/22

Marvin’s grandpa’s friend (no, I’m not going to try to remember his name and I never will) really has spent the entire week staring his own mortality and failure as a person in the face, but it’s almost the weekend so today we’re gonna “have a little fun” (talk about the cruel games he and his wife play because they have come to despite each other but cannot imagine being apart).

Comments are closed

Camp Swampy’s first court martial is truly going to surprise everybody

Post Content

Blondie, 8/8/22

The non-Dagwood, non-Herb members of Dagwood’s carpool are named “Dwitzell” and “Claudia,” and any and all attempts to give them inner or indeed outer lives have failed to stick with me, but I do like that Claudia is on the record as not liking the phrase “hot enough for you.” Yes, it’s hot, but that doesn’t mean you have to resort to such vile cliches! To me, she has now become by far the most sympathetic character in the comic strip Blondie, which was actually pretty easy because I honestly couldn’t tell you which if any of the other characters I found particularly sympathetic.

Dennis the Menace, 8/8/22

Dennis is trying a real baller menace move here: to destroy Mr. Wilson emotionally by offering up himself — his neighbor’s most hated nemesis — as a substitute for the grandchildren the Wilsons never had. It’s a swing and a miss, though. George Wilson has never felt affection for another human being and never will! You’re the one who’s shown weakness here today, Dennis, and you will live to regret it!

Beetle Bailey, 8/8/22

OH MY GOD EVEN DOGS ARE STEALING VALOR NOW, WHAT HAS THIS COUNTRY COME TO