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Archive: Beetle Bailey

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Thursday is for recanting criticism

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Gil Thorp, 7/4/19

Readers: I hereby apologize for ever doubting the continuity-respecting bona fides of the Gil Thorp creative team. Faithful reader Downpuppy pointed me to the GoComics Without GoComics archive site created by long-ago (and perhaps still current?) faithful reader commodorejohn, which fills in some of the gaps in my sadly deficient coverage of Gil Thorp in 2005. I had completely forgotten that Jaquan was not a brand-new character when he showed up with Trey Davis a couple summers ago; in fact, back in 2005, he had been Jaquan “The Don,” a superstar player at local high school powerhouse Bishop Tardy, which blew into Milford to take on the Mudlarks, media circus in tow. Hadley stumbled on Jaquan hiding out in the library and reading books like a nerd, and later convinced him to go to college instead of jumping straight to the NBA. A decade or so later, Hadley, who became a lawyer and apparently abandoned her ideals to represent big-shot clients who could gift her front-row Bulls tickets, reconnected with Jaquan during a game, and here we are! All’s well that ends well, with rhyming!

Mark Trail, 7/4/19

Ah ha, it seems JJ didn’t drown after all. Nope, he used the flood as a distraction to separate from the group with the map so he could get to the gold mine first, probably hoping that the rest of them would wander around the desert and eventually give up and go home. Sadly, he didn’t count on Doc’s perfect memory, so now he’s gonna have to shoot them. Hey Doc, bet you’re sorry you did all those crosswords to stay sharp now!

Beetle Bailey, 7/4/19

Ah, it’s July 4th, and you know what that means for Beetle Bailey, the only comic focusing on America’s military: another episode about the tedious interpersonal drama between Sarge and Beetle. But … are we missing something? Something about this date that we should probably be covering? Probably not, but if need be we can wedge in a visual reference to it at the last minute.

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Sarge looks like a man who’ll be reckoning with the things he’s done for some time

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Beetle Bailey, 6/22/19

Maybe I’m getting old and my brain is turning to pudding or whatever, but I genuinely enjoyed today’s Beetle Bailey! Mostly I like the contrast between Sarge and Otto’s faces. What exactly went down at this dog show? What did Otto think would go down? The phrase “Sarge took Otto to the dog show” doesn’t make it sound like Otto was formally entered in the competition, but perhaps Otto secretly hoped that he would be spotted in the stands by one of the judges, who would say “Who’s that? Why, it’s a dog in an army uniform! What a good boy! What a very good boy, indeed!” Instead a truly zany series of events occurred that left Otto furious and Sarge confused and a little sad.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/22/19

Wow, there’s a lot going on here when it comes to perceptions of the powers, purpose, and very nature of political authority. In the first panel, Snuffy bluntly demands that Sheriff Tait use his monopoly on legitimate violence in the Holler to expel outsiders: to our hillbilly, the demos to which the sheriff answers has the absolute right to control access to local territory and resources in favor of natives if competition for those resources gets too intense. The sheriff’s initial response might at first seem to indicate his loyalty to a code of abstract law — the outsiders have a right to be there, and nothing can be done unless they’ve actually committed a crime. But then, we see the cash in his hand and we learn the truth: Tait doesn’t truck with either modern legalism or traditional community-based exercises of power. He just sees the law and the state as a vehicle for his personal enrichment. Snuffy can’t help but be impressed.

Mark Trail, 6/22/19

Good news, everyone! Mark, Leola, and Doc are close to the mine! I guess they don’t need to find JJ and pull the map out from under his waterlogged corpse after all, and can just let the desert scavengers do their thing uninterrupted.

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I hope Mary and Jeff are just going around in a tight circle just offshore for this whole conversation

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Mary Worth, 6/20/19

Man, I didn’t intend to make this an All-Mary Worth week; in fact, if you had told me on Monday that we’d be getting a whole additional week of Estelle dating drama, I’d have been pretty mad about it. And yet I have been delighted to see a week spent with Mary and Dr. Jeff just taking potshots at Wilbur as they burn endless marine fuel zipping around the Channel Islands. Delighted, I say! Anyway, today we learn that Mary doesn’t really have much of a grip on Wilbur’s personality; she figures that, as a man, he must be “into” “sports” of some kind, but the only “sport” we’ve ever seen him engage in is running around in the woods with his illegitimate not-son. Despite claiming to value Wilbur as a friend or whatever when she was trying to stop him from hurling himself off a cliff, she clearly doesn’t have much interest into what Wilbur Weston is actually all about, and, honestly, who can blame her.

Slylock Fox, 6/20/19

Here’s another Six Differences that takes place at the very day, at the very moment when the animals suddenly Awoke and began the uprising that displaced humans from their place at the top of the food chain. Our enterprising bulldog has already realized he can manipulate tools and has freed his comrade from leash-slavery, while the shocked bunnies look on and realize start to understand their own sudden power. One thing that occurs to me is that a significant majority of pets are spayed or neutered, yet the post-animalpocalypse world has no shortage of puppies and kitties — do you think whatever process changed the animals also reversed the sterilization imposed on them by their oppressors? Anyway, these dogs are gonna go fuck, probably.

Beetle Bailey, 6/20/19

A thing I genuinely laughed at in today’s Beetle Bailey is the guy running in the background of panel one, presumably fleeing from the tornado, while General Halftrack and Major Greenbrass argue semantics. Ha ha, they’re going to be killed!