Archive: Beetle Bailey

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Beetle Bailey, 3/10/21

I generally don’t put too much stock into Beetle Bailey facial expressions — like, for instance, today I assume that Private Blips here is sporting Private Blips Clip Art Face #5 and isn’t supposed be expressing any specific emotion. But I would like to think that she’s experiencing a moment of genuine wonder because, after thinking about a question she’d never really dwelled on before, she’s finally realized what sort of person she wants to be: a person who marries and then divorces men for their money. Self-knowledge can be difficult to obtain, but is ultimately rewarding!

Shoe, 3/10/21

Speaking of over-interpreting facial expressions, I’m hoping the Perfesser’s wide, shocked eyes come before Biz’s explanation, because he was briefly worried that the old bird-man was trapped in some kind of time loop, reaching his milestone 100th year each day, then being reset by 24 hours while he sleeps so he can experience it all over again when he wakes up the next morning, like running on an eternal treadmill on the precipice of death.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/10/21

Hey, did you enjoy the Funky Winkerbean plot where Cindy was convinced Mason was cheating on her, for no real reason, because women be jealous, amiright? No? Well, I have some bad news for you about Jess, Darrin, and some sitcom-style misunderstood overheard conversations!

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The Lockhorns, 2/20/21

I sincerely enjoy the presence of non-Lockhorn characters in the Lockhorns, who often seem to have somehow been drawn into Leroy and Loretta’s social orbit, where they never remain for long for obvious reasons. Take the dude standing next to Leroy here: that is a perfectly rendered facial expression for someone who’s just gone on his first outing with someone he thinks might be a new friend and has had a good time watching a movie, only to be hit with “You know who I hate? My wife.”

Shoe, 2/20/21

For all I snipe at the strip, you gotta give props to Shoe for having a consistent aesthetic tone, and that tone can best be described as “bone-deep weariness.” “Thank you, Cosmo,” Trish says out loud in response to this backhanded compliment, but what her eyes and posture say, very clearly, is “I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes and yearn so, so strongly for death.”

Beetle Bailey, 2/20/21

Honestly can’t decide if the proper response to this one is “Finally, the media reputation the narcoleptic community has yearned for” or “Beetle Bailey: Asexual Icon.”

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Beetle Bailey, 2/9/21

I guess the point of this strip is that each of these characters is responding to the question of what to get Sarge for his birthday in his own way, according to his own character (in Beetle Bailey, “character” means “whatever dumb on-the-nose collection of tics and running gags they’ve accrued over the years”). So, Plato wants to give him a book, because he’s a nerd; Killer wants to give him a box of candy, because he’s so monomaniacally focused on getting laid that his only context for gift-giving is the cliches of heterosexual courtship; Zero wants to to give him a comic book, because he’s dumb (?); and Rocky wants to give him a music mix, because he’s named “Rocky” due to the fact that when he was introduced into the strip, his one-note character was focused on liking rock ‘n’ roll music, which was as novel then as omnipresent personal computers were when Specialist Chip Gizmo was introduced in the early ’00s, because that’s just how long Beetle Bailey has been around. Anyway, I wanted to point out that all of these people are giving Sarge something they’d like, not something that he would actually want to receive. Can you visualize Sarge reading a book? Of course not. Only Beetle’s proposal is actually thoughtful. Sadly, it will not be appreciated.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/9/21

After kicking off his life as a diagnosed diabetic with one last indulgent fast-food meal, Buck’s blood sugar numbers got real bad, but then he came home and exercised, and they got OK again! Is this … how diabetes works? I don’t know much about it but I do know that Rex Morgan, M.D., is a rigorously fact-checked comic that aims primarily to spread accurate medical information, so I’m just going to assume that this is, in fact, how diabetes works. Good job, Buck! Looks like you’re on your way to a healthy lifesty[finally gets to narration box at bottom of second panel] OH NO

Pluggers, 2/9/21

I mean, duh, of course he’s not going to fold up his underwear. The wrinkle lines are a further turn-on for fans of the sick sex thing that Pluggers, in one of 2021’s biggest surprises, has become.