Post Content

Mark Trail, 11/23/20

You know, Allen-era Mark Trail already upgraded Rusty from “ward” to “son” so I was wondering if he’d be retconned into a biological child of Mark and Cherry under the new regime, but with all this talk of dark secrets and Mark’s cloned lineage, and now new-look biker dude Doc wondering how Rusty will think about their relationship going forward … well, I’m just going to assume they’re all clones, and now they’ll just address each other respectfully as “pod-mate”.

Beetle Bailey, 11/23/20

I’m assuming that “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” is in quotes here because Rocky’s just using it as a general stand-in for “I used to have fun and/or cool,” not because he’s had sex. Nobody in Beetle Bailey has ever had sex. Please, I desperately need to hold onto that notion to stay sane. NO SEX IN BEETLE BAILEY, I FORBID IT.

Dick Tracy, 11/23/20

This pair of criminal masterminds hasn’t exactly set the world on fire with their crime skills, so I think it’d be pretty fitting if Daisy slipped and fell back onto Yeti and they both fell into the sewer and drowned. Dick never spots anything on the drone cam, the meteorite goes unmolested, everyone just kind of moves on with their lives. “Hey, we ever figure out what was up with those people who fell into comas?” Chief Patton asks. “I don’t think so, chief,” says Dick. “I guess it was just one of those things.”

Funky Winkerbean, 11/23/20

If you, like me, find Harry Dinkle intensely unlikeable, I’m happy to inform you that he spends his nights writing in agony, thinking of his past failures.

Pluggers, 11/23/20

Damn it, pluggers. Do you … do you really think you’re the only ones who like ice cream. Come on. Come on now. Give us some pluggers-specific content in the Pluggers syndicated newspaper strip or give it the fuck up

Post Content

Hagar the Horrible, 11/8/20

Welp, I guess Hagar the Horrible is thoroughly cementing Lucky Eddie’s mermaid-focused sexuality into strip canon. In today’s installment, we learn both that Eddie has attempted without success to conform himself to society’s idea of who he should fall in love with (mammals), and also that, no matter how much Hagar’s family and warband have thrown in with the newly arrived Christian religion, they still have to deal with the occasional pagan diety, especially when they fuck said deity’s daughter.

Mark Trail, 11/8/20

Hey look, it’s Jules Rivera’s first Sunday nature strip! It looks great, fits in with the storied tradition of these Sunday strips, and absolutely includes a piss joke.

The Phantom, 11/8/20

The current Sunday Phantom plot features our hero helping out a Bangallan cop who appears to be the one person outside his inner circle who realizes that the “Man-Who-Cannot-Die” bit is obvious flim-flam, and good for him! Today we learn that the Ghost-Who-Walks not only stores the priceless historic heritage of many cultures in his non-temperature-controlled cave, but also hoards the world’s biodiversity on an island optimistically called “Isle of Eden” but where nevertheless I’m reasonably sure a certain amount of endangered-species-on-endangered-species carnivorism goes on.

Beetle Bailey, 11/8/20

I of course have always assumed that due to the weird chronological discontinuities brought about by comic book time, we’re meant to understand that Beetle walked into a recruiting office in 1951, just like he did in the strips that ran in 1951, and has stayed in the military ever since. But today’s strip seems to have updated the timeline a bit, with Beetle and Sarge (?)’s teenagerhood now having taken place in [squints] the ’80s? Sure, let’s say the ’80s. This still presumably makes Beetle the oldest living serving private in the entire U.S. Army, but at least it’s not that improbable that he’s still alive.

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 11/7/20

I guess the joke here is that Sarge is an ape-like brute who took Beetle’s first-panel retort as an invitation to pound him into a pulp in traditional Beetle Bailey fashion. But I’d like to imagine that in fact Sarge took Beetle to a zoo or gorilla sanctuary and threw him into an enclosure to be attacked, or perhaps released a gorilla he keeps captive for just such occasions, because he is a very literal ape-like brute.

Hi and Lois, 11/7/20

Faithful readers of this blog know that I’m extremely on board with Hi and Lois reclaiming Thirsty’s original characterization as a sad, desperate alcoholic. I’m sad that the colorists of today’s strip, apparently unaware of the comics’ rich history of using alcohol-inflamed rhinopehyma as a visual gag, spent all their red-yellow gradient efforts on the fall leaves and not on Thirsty’s cross-hatched nose. Because Hi is trash-talking his neighbor and best (only?) friend well within hearing distance, I assume that Thirsty is fully passed out in that chair.

Pluggers, 11/7/20

I am dying to know the relationship between this strip and the infamous “Rhino-Man Hocks His TV” panel, not least because that appears to be the identical model of television, which was decades out of date even when Rhino-Man hocked it back in 2006. I don’t know if we’re supposed to understand that Dog-Man is superior to Rhino-Man in fixiness, the quality most valued in a plugger after down-home smugness and sexism, or if this is in fact the exact same TV, which the guy at the pawn shop gave Dog-Man at no charge just to free up some space on his shelves.