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Archive: Beetle Bailey

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Monday madness

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Shoe, 4/10/23

I joke about goggle eyes of horror a lot on this site in regards to Shoe but here’s an instance when they’re absolutely justified. Why on earth would you start a conversation like this? Why are you going around springing little “I can’t operate on this man … he’s my son!” riddles on people without their consent? Roz is just trying to supply everyone with passable diner food and make just enough conversation so they don’t feel lonely, so why would you do this to her? It’s unconscionable!

Mary Worth, 4/10/23

I was going to go on a riff about how Estelle’s going to be “getting her hands dirty” all right, once she starts having to euthanize animals, but then I caught glimpse of her eyes in the second panel. That’s a lady who got to her volunteer gig this morning and immediately started enjoying the massive amounts of horse tranquilizer that Dr. Ed keeps on hand at the vet clinic (a vet clinic that does not now and has never in the past treated horses).

Beetle Bailey, 4/10/23

You ever think that Beetle Bailey just might kind of want to die? Would explain a lot!

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Cantankerous Tuesday

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Beetle Bailey, 4/4/23

I think an underrated and probably quite realistic aspect of Beetle Bailey is that its motley crew of characters, thrown together by their duty to the military and forced to spend almost all their time with one another, for the most part don’t really care for each other and their relationships could degenerate into open brawling with very little provocation.

The Lockhorns, 4/4/23

It gives me no pleasure to say that this panel does not live up, in my opinion, to The Lockhorns’ usually high quality standards. There’s nothing realistic Loretta could’ve said that text-to-speak would’ve botched into the names of these objects, and I feel the choices of what we’re seeing are aiming for an “LOL so random” vibe that is not what we come here for. That said, it is very in character for Leroy to not ask for clarification but to instead buy all of these obviously incorrect items, perhaps spending his entire day going from store to store looking for them, just to come home and rub Loretta’s mistake in her face.

Blondie, 4/4/23

I don’t really have strong feelings about panels two or three of today’s Blondie. But the first panel? The one where a stone-faced news anchor announces “National Humor Month” next to a smiley-face graphic, while a curmudgeonly old man says “Humor month?! With all the problems in the world today?” It’s perfection. No notes.

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She’s already wearing her sexiest vest

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Judge Parker, 3/28/23

Look, we’ve had a lot of dragged-out and sometimes baffling emotional processing between these two over the past few years, and I for one am not ready for them to sheepishly admit that they probably should never have broken up in the first place. I am grudgingly prepared to allow for an eventual reconciliation so long as Abbey’s “find[ing] out what [she] want[s]” involves a voyage of sexual exploration across the great state of whatever state Cavelton is in that lasts at least through the summer.

Daddy Daze, 3/28/23

I was about to say that the Daddy Daze baby has finally figured out the central joke of the Daddy Daze comic strip, which is that the Daddy Daze daddy “repeats” everything the Daddy Daze baby “says” so that we at home can understand it, but of course the baby hasn’t figured anything out at all; he’s an infant and all his various “ba”s really are just pre-verbal babbling. No, what actually happened is that the Daddy Daze daddy has decided to get increasingly meta with his bit, which really is a product of his desperately lonely and increasingly unhinged mind. The baby can’t understand you, man! And you can’t understand him either! You’re talking to nobody!

Beetle Bailey, 3/28/23

Beetle Bailey has been slowly adding more rounded characterization to Zero of all people over the past few years: we’ve learned that in addition to being very stupid, he’s a farm boy and also a terrifyingly accurate killer. He’s also a teetotaler, I guess? Adding this information to the file [I open an enormous file cabinet next to my desk and pull out a folder labeled BEETLE BAILEY CHARACTERS M-Z]