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Beetle Bailey, 8/10/20

Every once in a while, Beetle Bailey accidentally stumbles into creating a surrealist masterpiece, and I think today is one of those days. What’s your favorite part of this unsettling dreamscape? I’m a big fan of the forest suddenly giving way to the Sonoran Desert, the barbed wire fence that just abruptly stops, and, of course, the way the soldiers stand silently a foot or so apart in a seemingly infinite line, their faces carefully absent of any emotion or affect.

Mary Worth, 8/10/20

Look, Toby, tens of thousands of people successfully produce passable banana bread every year, and it’s not because there’s a secret ingredient only they know that they aren’t letting you in on! Stop trying to make Madi betray her beloved dead grandmother’s secrets just so you can get a tiny bit of clout at your dumb condo board meeting. I was going to say “just admit that you’re an artist, not a baker,” but then I remembered that you’re not much of an artist, either.

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Beetle Bailey, 8/4/20

It’s bad new for the General that the “Halftracks hate each other” bits seems to have fully detached from their usual scheduled weekend slot and are now just popping up on any old day. It’s great news for me, though, because I’m a black-hearted sadist who can’t get enough of these gags! Anyway, today’s joke is that even sleep cannot free General Halftrack from the all-consuming psychic pain that his marriage causes him; only alcohol’s consciousness-obliterating powers can do that, and only briefly.

The Lockhorns, 8/4/20

Speaking of marital misanthropy, the rather abstract Lockhorns art style makes it difficult to really convey the sort of grunge you actually want a cleaning person to take care of — does anyone actually pay someone to pick a couch cushion off the floor? — but honestly I’m reasonably sure the Lockhorns don’t have a cleaning lady, and that the “cleaning lady” is like George and Martha’s fake son in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with Loretta bringing her up every time the papers start piling up.

Funk Winkerbean, 8/4/20

[clapping excitedly] EVERYBODY’S GONNA DIE

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Crankshaft, 7/30/20

The Valentine Theater is the passion project for Crankshaft’s grandson Max, and as the owner and a true cinephile, you’d think he’d be mad about, for instance, people just talking at full volume during the movies, and that he’d try to prevent it, even if the offenders were his parents. I assume this conversation is happening because, despite The Phantom Empire being fairly well known and regarded by film history buffs, no actual paying customers have shown up to see it. Can’t believe this theater isn’t going to go out of business for another ten years!

Beetle Bailey, 7/30/30

I honestly love the twisted, tongue-centered riff on Cinderella in today’s Beetle Bailey. Look at how mad General Halftrack is! Those eyes! The rage! His age- and booze-addled brain couldn’t retain the face of the man who sassed him, but he’ll never forget the tongue. The vision of it haunts him at night. It haunts him.

Dennis the Menace, 7/30/20

Every menace we encounter is just a second-order byproduct of the one true primeval menace, which is insatiable need