Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 2/7/25

Unfortunately, Beetle’s little prank happened to fall on the morning when the coalition of America’s enemies finally launched their long-planned invasion. With Camp Swampy’s main NCO out of commission until hours after the alarm was raised, and its commanding general blind drunk, the 13th Infantry Division was undermanned, unprepared, and unable to hold the left flank during the decisive Battle of Hurleysburg. Sarge never did forgive Beetle, but they were kept in different internment camps — Beetle and Killer had predictably gotten separated from the rest of the company during the chaos and were captured miles away from the main battle front — and never saw each other again before Beetle died of dysentery two years later.

The Phantom, 2/7/25

Not to be outdone by the Sunday Phantom doing a flashback to the adventures of an early Phantom in 16th century Africa, the weekday Phantom is doing a flashback to an even earlier Phantom, specifically the very first one, seen here swearing an oath over his father’s killer’s crab-eaten corpse. He’s only spent a little time in Africa at this point, but in the second panel you can see that he’s already very sunburned, and it’s a little disheartening 22 generations of Phantom decided the solution to this problem was to focus on advances in skin-protecting lycra technology so they could keep importing white brides from Europe.

Post Content

Hagar the Horrible, 2/5/25

Hagar is of course no friend of kings, so obviously this strip, where he appears to be halpertfacing to the reader while hanging out with his friend the king while the king waxes philosophical, is a bit confusing. A more likely interpretation of what we’re seeing: for once Hagar has decided to abandon his usual strategy of frontal assault on a targeted stronghold for stealth, the king thinks he’s alone and is just soliloquizing to nobody in particular, and Hagar is halpertfacing to the reader just before slitting the king’s throat and stealing his gold.

Dennis the Menace, 2/5/25

I can’t believe everyone is smiling at this terrible quip from Dennis. You should not be smiling about this! You should be very upset!

Pluggers, 2/5/25

Plugger torch passed from Boomers to Gen X: CONFIRMED

Post Content

Blondie, 2/4/25

Today is in fact “Thank A Mail Carrier Day,” or at least it is according to National Day Calendar Dot Com, and I’m sure that’s good enough for the fake-holiday-obsessed Blondie creative team so it’s good enough for me. Now, while I always think it’s polite to thank someone who provides you with a service, even if they are just doing their job, this does seem like a kind of silly holiday, but you will note that the National Day Calendar Dot Com link provided above describes the event as National Thank A Mail Carrier Day, not Your Mail Carrier Day, which probably reflects the fact that most of us do not interact with our mail carrier on a regular basis, and many routes don’t have the same carrier every day, or may have different carriers delivering letters and packages at different times. Certainly most of us don’t have a consistent mail carrier who somehow manages to get there during a time when a 9 to 5 office worker would be home, and who hands us our mail personally and hangs around to shoot the shit a little bit instead of just putting the letters in the easily accessible mailbox and being on their way. Dagwood should be thanking him!

Dustin, 2/4/25

Dustin (the comic strip) is about the eternal struggle between dipshit son and asshole dad, and I reserve the bulk of my ire for the asshole dad, not because I deny Dustin’s dipshittery, but because the dad is usually depicted as the “correct” agonist in their conflict, when the true enlightened assessment is that they’re both wrong. Still, I’ve often found it unrealistic how quickly Dustin gets shot down in these anachronistic scenarios — like, he’s not hideous or anything and surely it takes a little while for his subpar personality to become obvious? But if he’s really leading with stuff like “I got my hair cut today,” then, yeah, I get it.

Dennis the Menace, 2/4/25

Oh no! Dennis has worked out for himself the idea of inelastic demand … truly one of the more menacing of economic laws!

Beetle Bailey, 2/4/25

I love how dead eyed everyone other than the visiting officer is in panel two. It’s like, yeah, there’s some wacky stuff going on here, but they’ve been dealing with it for like 70 years of strip time now and they’re pretty much over it. They’re not just “used to it”; frankly, they’re exhausted.