Archive: Beetle Bailey

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Blondie, 11/2/24

The Blondie creative team is usually very locked in to whatever big calendar full of real and fake holidays that’s clearly hanging up in the writer’s room, so today’s misstep is actually kind of surprising to me. Sure, it was possible, weeks ago when this strip was written, that game six of the World Series might’ve been played on November 1, but it was also possible that one of the teams would wrap it up in five games or less, as one of them in fact did (go Dodgers!). Anyway, I get why you’d risk it though, the glaring error is absolutely worth it to deliver this tight, flawless joke about a mailman streaming the baseball game from the night before, so his trainee has to talk to one of the mail route customers, like the regular guy usually does, about something that we don’t need to bother explaining, you know, the usual customer-mailman conversations we all know and love and have every day.

Marvin, 11/2/24

Of the weird holdover jokes from an entirely different era of gender relations that routinely pop up in newspaper comics, I have to say that “haha, it’s women’s job to cook but this particular woman is really bad at it!” are my absolute least favorite. The particular woman in question could be the speaking character’s mother, wife, or (as in this case) daughter, each possibility carrying with it its own specific unpleasant vibe. That said, I do think today’s Marvin is kind of funny because usually you think of “runing your appetite” as something you do with snacking, but Roy is just straight-up eating a whole actual meal here. Like he knows Jenny’s cooking is terrible, he wants no part of it, and he’s just made his own dinner early, because he’s fully self-sufficient.

Beetle Bailey, 11/2/24

Some days I think I’ve left the snickering sexual innuendo I was prone to in this blog’s early days behind, but then I encounter a strip like “Lt. Fuzz decides to horn in on General Halftrack’s threesome,” sigh heavily, and realize I will simply not be able to help myself. Anyway, here’s today’s Beetle Bailey, in which Lt. Fuzz decides to horn in on General Halftrack’s threesome.

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Mary Worth, 11/1/24

Aww, who came to Dr. Ed and Estelle’s last-minute, let’s-make-it-legal-before-we-have-another-dumb-fight wedding? Well, from right, we have: Saul and Eve (intense dog owners, probably repeat customers at Dr. Ed’s clinic due to obsessive worrying over their pets’ health), Dr. Ed’s former lover Shiela, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (officiant), Mary, some guy (maybe supposed to be Dr. Jeff except his temples aren’t grey and also his nose and chin look wrong???), and, of course, Wilbur, making his second appearance at an ex’s wedding in as many years. It’s good that this is happening to him! I think he should continue to suffer further humiliation until he’s learned his lesson (he never will). Maybe he’ll get an invite from Fabiana when she finally marries her cousin, dare to dream!

Crock, 11/1/24

I dunno, maybe I’m reading too much into a kind of nothing joke, but I feel like at least a little of the implication here is that the wife is going to be eating this dinner too, right? “Don’t eat the dinner, honey … the dinner is me … the dinner is me” (she’ll never hear it because nobody listens to their voice mail anymore, haha kids today am I right)

Beetle Bailey, 11/1/24

“Do the creators of Beetle Bailey know what ‘puppy play’ is?” is the sort of question that I will never, ever want to actually learn the answer to but also will never, ever be able to stop thinking about.

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Gil Thorp, 10/22/24

Oh hey, remember the new guys introduced this year on the Mudlark football team? Well, I forgot to mention that one of them has this running bit where he says “yeet” all the time, not in a sentence or anything, just as a general exclamation. I’m actually kind of torn on how realistic that is, because it’s true that teenagers are generally goofy idiots who will repeatedly say a word they think is funny with no context, but also shouldn’t these guys be young enough to just think of “yeet” as a regular word? It’s a verb that means to hurl something away with great force, if you don’t know, although the Merriam-Webster Dictionary website says it also could be an interjection “used to express surprise, approval, or excited enthusiasm,” and if you can’t trust the dictionary about the sort of things teens say, who can you trust?

Beetle Bailey, 10/22/24

Julius, General Halftrack’s driver, is a character who doesn’t show up much in this strip — one of the only times I’ve ever name-checked him was in a 2004 post about Sarge having a gay panic dream, where both the comic and the post are something of a time capsule at this point — but I appreciate the nice, good look we’re getting at his extremely grim facial expression here. Not sure where the smart money was going on which of the Camp Swampy guys was going to Full Metal Jacket the place, but I know where it’s going now!

Blondie, 10/22/24

Hey guys, let’s check in on Blondie! The joke in today’s Blondie is that Dagwood is very depressed.