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Mary Worth, 5/23/22

This upcoming storyline can’t possibly be about Dawn and what’s-his-face, the Star Wars nerd whose name the narration box can’t even be bothered to remember so I’m definitely not looking it up, because they’re boring losers. The way Mary’s looking straight at us in the first panel seems like a challenge: which character will have their brain baked by the summer sun until they finally allow themselves the awful experience of knowing another and being known in turn? Will it be Mary? Is Mary going to see if she can make 2022 “hot Mary summer” and finally fall in love? And how will Dr. Jeff fit into the picture? Will she at least have the decency to break up with him first, like the time she had a dalliance with a guy who she cruised at his own mother’s funeral? Or will she just keep him completely in the dark, like that time she went to New York and romanced a Broadway legend? I for one am, predictably, excited to find out.

Beetle Bailey, 5/23/22

Now, a lot of people are going to be very focused on Sarge, strung up and entangled in flypaper as if he himself were some huge, grotesque insect, his tongue having been stuck in this trap as he’s sweated and squirmed for who knows how long. But me? I’m still fixated on Cookie’s line in panel one: “I’m anxious to see how many flies I caught in my traps last night,” he says to nobody, with a huge smile on his face. Definitely the voice he’s using to say this sounds like Renfield from the Bela Lugosi Dracula, right? That’s the only option here?

Dick Tracy, 5/23/22

Old-school nightmaretown Dick Tracy reached its apogee in the very last of the Locher/Brozman strips, in which a gimp-suited murderer was eaten alive by rats. The team over the last decade has not gone down that road very much, but I have to say that eating rats, while not as gross, is definitely a first step in that direction.

Marvin, 5/23/22

Man, he knows his butthole is where the poop exits from! That’s the not the problem! It’s the timing and circumstances of the exiting that are the issue here! You may walk on your hind legs and have rudimentary literacy, but you aren’t as smart a dog as you think!

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Beetle Bailey, 5/7/22

I have never denied being an effete urban liberal and so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that I know very little about how guns “work.” That said, I did see, in the theater, the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Eraser (dubbed “the OK-est film of 1996” in a review in the Omaha World-Herald that is sadly behind a paywall), so I’m aware that carrying a rifle in each hand with an intent to shoot both at once is simultaneously possible and extremely cool looking. Yes, Sarge’s guns are not anywhere near as bad-ass as Arnold’s, but also Beetle and Killer are significantly less dangerous foes than even the henchmen in a typical Schwarzenegger movie, and definitely my first thought in seeing this is that Sarge had decided that an accidental encounter in the dark, where faces can’t be seen but the perimeter of the facility must be protected at all costs, might be the solution to a lot of his long-running problems.

Gil Thorp, 5/7/22

You read it here first: they’re gonna drag this thing out so that we think Mr. Hamm is on the run from the mob or something, when in fact he’s the subject of a humiliating viral video from like 2009, where he tripped in public and said something real dorky like “Oh, for love of Pete!” His personal hell is that every new microgeneration of teens discovers his pratfall anew every few years on the latest social media platform: the college-age millennials of the early ’10s on Facebook, the dirtbags of Snapchat, the doomscrollers of Twitter, the furries of Tumblr — each, at the height of their power, coming together to relentless cyberbully him. Currently it’s spreading like wild on TikTok, as teens worldwide try to imitate the tremulous tone he uses with “Pete!” while deliberately falling face-first onto the sidewalk as their friends hoot and holler behind the camera. If any of these people find out where he lives, he’ll be toast.

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Beetle Bailey, 5/3/22

Man, I really respect the second panel here for unleashing the full-throttle refusal to give a shit that makes Beetle Bailey the strip we all know and read every day for some reason. Just a bunch of people, some of whom we know and some we don’t, standing around a … void? with no furniture? because that’s what a “rec room” is, in the army? I guess???? Anyway, the fact that everyone’s facial expressions range from mild excitement to vague annoyance is just icing on the cake. Bravo, it doesn’t get more Beetle Bailey vibes than this.

Curtis, 5/3/22

“Ignorant,” Curtis? Derrick and Onion clearly paid attention in class when you were supposed to be learning about Greek mythology, which is more than you can say.

Dick Tracy, 5/3/22

“Yes, your honor, we have Stuntman Mike’s evidence on this. No, I don’t know his last name. I don’t know if he’s actually a stuntman, either. I only talk to him on the computer and his face is always blurred out. Look, are you going to give me a no-knock warrant to raid this day care center or am I going to have to start leaking to the press that you’re a soft-on-crime lib the next time you’re up for re-election?”