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Gasoline Alley, 1/21/23

Does anyone put a lot of energy into predicting how Gasoline Alley plots will get resolved? Like, no one does, right? Not even me? Well, let’s pretend we all do for the sake of this next joke, OK? [clears throat] Wow, I don’t think any of us had “Santa’s prayers were answered by a hot new she-elf showing up, causing Bunky to abandon his plans for an exciting, independent adventure and instead pledge another century of his eternal (?) life to serving Santa, due to horniness” on our Gasoline Alley plot resolution bingo card, which is a thing we all definitely maintain!

Bizarro, 1/21/23

I guess Bizarro has finally figured out what it takes to get noticed on this blog, and it’s weird interspecies sex stuff. One thing I enjoy about this panel is that usually in gags where a fish has crawled up onto a barren shore, we’re supposed to imagine it representing the first vertebrate colonizing the land sometime in the late Devonian period, but here our brave fish encounters a tiger, meaning that at the very earliest we’re several hundred million years later in the Miocene. That fish isn’t an evolutionary pioneer or anything, it just wants to fuck a mammal.

Beetle Bailey, 1/21/23

I’m sorry, I think all of us have always assumed over years reading this strip that Sarge is functionally illiterate. This “joke” is not very good, and certainly not worth forcing me to completely restructure my idea of what Sarge is all about to accommodate the possibility that he can write a restaurant review! “But Josh,” you’re probably saying, “this is a one-off joke that will never be referenced again,” but sorry, it’s canon now and I have to update the wiki and everything, how dare they do this to me personally

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Gil Thorp, 1/6/23

It saddens me that Marty Moon, Gil’s oldest frenemy, feels like he needs to introduce himself here. Presumably he’s doing it not for Gil’s sake but in the hopes that the local news will broadcast his question and won’t edit out him saying the name of his podcast. Gotta #hustle to build that #brand, Marty! Anyway, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out if Gil is doing some kind of wordplay on “Behind the Playbook” in that last panel, like he’s really saying “under my behind” or something, and have come to the conclusion that he’s actually trying to get this very question into Marty’s head, knowing the Marty’s going to be muttering “did Thorp just call me an ass?” to himself as he edits the podcast and wonders how much longer he can resist the siren song of drink.

Curtis, 1/6/23

Update on this year’s Kwanzaa tale: Joe D. Cawfee, who was born with a head featuring rabbit traits and wished he wasn’t different, had his wish granted by his magic fish, but in an ironic way, whoops! Also, his magic fish dropped dead in the process of granting the wish. Also the Curtis creative team would like to emphasize that you should not interpret this story as implying that the only way to solve conflict is to eliminate differences of all kinds, OK? The Curtis creative team is not going to explain why this guy is named “Joe D. Cawfee” either.

Beetle Bailey, 1/6/23

Remember how in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the U.S. military and intelligence services went all out to recruit people who could speak Arabic and Persian? Well, we’re a new geopolitcial phase now, and we need everyone who’s ever said that they’re “fluent in sarcasm” in their Twitter bio or Tinder profile to step up and protect our nation from the current threats.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 1/6/23

Ha, get it, because she’s … a carnivorous animal of some kind? Do carnivores date birds, in the Mother Goose and Grimm universe, where most, though not all, of the characters are animals? I was about to apologize for not knowing the world-building rules of the Mother Goose and Grimm universe despite having read the strip for years but you know what? I’m not actually sorry about it! I’m not sorry at all.

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Dick Tracy, 12/4/22

Look, here’s a tough message to all you “social justice warriors” out there: if you would simply allow police to do their jobs by hounding suspects to their ironic deaths, and if juries on the trials for those few cases where someone survives to go to court would just “serve cheerfully and use [their] best judgement” (i.e., convict in all cases) as the Crimestoppers Textbook suggests, then we could all live in a utopian paradise like Neo-Chicago, where selling counterfeit animation cels to furries is a crime considered major enough to attract the Major Crime Unit’s attention.

Gasoline Alley, 12/4/22

America’s population, and its newspaper comics reading population in particular, is rapidly aging, and many yearn for simple pleasures, like having a live-in domestic servant with whom they can share a laugh over alliteration in news articles. Sadly, thanks to out-of-control inflation in servant wages, most cannot afford that luxury, and must be satisfied with its depiction in Gasoline Alley, the old person’s comic of choice for extremely low-stakes chuckles.

Mary Worth, 12/4/22

OK, Iris, I know you’re very fixated on the physical similarities between you and Nan, but I think you do need to spend some time emotionally dealing with “yummy yummy yummy… for my tummy tummy tummy!” If you don’t nip this in the bud now, it absolutely will be part of your wedding vows.

Beetle Bailey, 12/4/22

Love the fact that, in his addled ramble around the house, General Halftrack managed to acquire a healthy pour of brown liquor. My man’s getting up there in years, but he’s still got it! (The “it” is of course a debilitating alcohol problem.)