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Folks, today is what would’ve been Peanuts creator Charles Schulz’s 100th birthday! I feel pretty strongly that he was the best who ever did it in the newspaper comics world, and one of the great things he did was not hand off the strip to a child or assistant and create one more zombie lurching across the funny pages.

Anyway, most of the strips (zombie or otherwise) are celebrating Peanuts today, and most of those celebrations and great and heartfelt. But this website isn’t called the Comics Respecter, so for this Thanksgiving Saturday I’m going to bring you the two worst ones. Enjoy!

Marvin, 11/26/22

Feel like this is the very worst of the bunch. Ha ha, Marvin is talking about the comic strip Peanuts, but his friend has never heard of it and thinks he’s talking about peanuts, the food! And why would he have heard of the comic strip, anyway? It stopped running in papers years ago and these guys are literal babies. Honestly it’s pretty weird that Marvin knows about it. Anyway, that’s it, the third panel is just wasted, and we assume these two babies move onto some other conversational topic that they can both engage with on equal terms. Couldn’t even be bothered to wedge a poop joke in there. Sad!

Beetle Bailey, 11/26/22

Speaking of sad, before they did this strip, the team over at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC probably briefly contemplated what their lives would be like if all comics artists were as protective of their creations as Charles Schulz was. Or maybe they didn’t! Honestly, nothing that’s ever appeared in this strip implies that they’re real introspective over there. Either way, their vision for this assignment was “What the town where the entire Peanuts gang lives was washed away in a flood, with a terrified Snoopy the only survivor?”

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Family Circus, 11/22/22

Back in 1996, Ma Keane got a kicky new hairstyle and it was such a big deal that it was the subject of feature stories in major newspapers. But in these fallen days, when comics are a neglected medium, there’s exactly zero buzz about Big Daddy Keane finally bleaching his hair platinum blond like he’s always wanted to. I think he looks great!

Funky Winkerbean, 11/22/22

Oh, god, it looks like we’re finally going to find out that the janitor has been putting cancer into the water all these years. IT WAS THE JANITOR! IT WAS THE JANITOR ALL ALONG! I mean, wouldn’t you try to kill off these freaks if you had the chance?

Beetle Bailey, 11/22/22

Anyone else briefly think Zero had frozen to death and get kinda sad while reading panel one? This is a hell of a way to find out that I care whether a Beetle Bailey character lives or dies!

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Beetle Bailey, 11/13/22

This is an actually pretty good Beetle Bailey, in my opinion. It uses the longer Sunday format to interesting effect: taking what should be a sharp shock — an NCO plans to set a vicious dog onto one of the soldiers under his command in a grotesque abuse of power — and smooths it down into rambling day in the life story about the dog. He doesn’t want to do any harm. His heart’s not in it. It’s just a job, really. But never let it be said that he won’t do his job.

Mary Worth, 11/13/22

Mary seems pretty eager for gossip — “So, changed your mind about any marriage proposals after your boyfriend almost died in the stupidest way possible lately?” — but frankly Iris has been checked out from the Charterstone buzz factory so much lately that Mary’s probably not even up to speed enough to wonder about that. I’m guessing she’s actually angling for more info on whatever “items” Iris just dropped off for Tommy. The California electorate may have decided that citizens are allowed to smoke whatever they want, but the Charterstone condo board still has some standards.