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Dick Tracy, 4/3/19

Well I for one am excited that this current Dick Tracy storyline, about a journalist who’s also a serial killer, seems to be entirely focused on the journalist-serial killer’s dissatisfaction with the nickname he’s had foisted onto him. He apparently would prefer to be known as “The Professor” because he “teaches the teachers,” which, not to sound like an elitist or anything, implies that he wholly misunderstands the distinction between secondary and tertiary education. Also, since I guess I’m going to sound like an elitist no matter what, it’s a little less impressive to “teach the teachers” when the teachers you teach are all gym teachers.

Gil Thorp, 4/3/19

Ahh, finally we’re learning what the “family stuff” was that kids were missing precious softball scrimmages for: doing “stuff” at a convention with your “family” of fellow content producers in the pop culture industrial complex. It looks like our spring Gil Thorp storyline is going to answer that age-old question: can a jock also be … a nerd?

Mark Trail, 4/3/19

Whoa, check out the quick swivel Mark’s got going on in the first panel here. “I’m sorry, is someone other than me needlessly reassuring a woman who’s talking about outdoorsy stuff that she hasn’t made an embarrassing error? And does that other person have the hint of a beard? I sense trouble brewing!”

Beetle Bailey, 4/3/19

As the U.S. military crumbles and the homeland itself is subject to enemy invasion, we’re down to our last line of defense: the troops garrisoned at Camp Swampy. With artillery raining down on the command post, things are not looking good.

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/31/19

Hey, how’s it going with Funky’s mother-in-law moving in with him and Holly? Well, it’s been, what, two weeks, and already he’s hoping she’s gonna die of a pill overdose on the toilet.

Mary Worth, 3/31/19

Folks, take it from me, a guy who spends way too much time hanging out alone with, and talking to, cats: when you try to convince your cat that you’re making the right decision, you know in your heart you aren’t making the right decision.

Panels from Beetle Bailey, 3/31/19

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, it will come as no surprise to you that I’m the kind of guy who would read these throwaway panels in Sunday’s Beetle Bailey and wonder, “Say, can you stream old Lassie episodes?” Turns out you can’t! So that means I have to smugly give these panels “four pinocchios,” in the parlance of our fact-checking press. Unless … there’s a special Dogflix service that provides streaming dog-related content, and it’s only available to dogs? This is a mystery I will now dedicate my entire energy to cracking!

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Beetle Bailey, 3/29/19

Sorry, I feel like I have to call bullshit here: while Beetle Bailey is somewhat of a trickster narrative figure, like Kokopelli or Bugs Bunny, his overwhelmingly dominant characteristic is that he is extremely lazy. He can’t even maintain consciousness for the full duration of a single date, so I refuse to believe that he has the gumption or energy to either learn enough artistic skill to paint a serviceable Picasso pastiche, or that he would bother to dress up like an “artist” stereotype just to add to the laughs when General Halftrack confronted him.

Hi and Lois, 3/29/19

Chip, I know you live out in the ‘burbs and have only passing familiarity with what the hipsters are up to, so, as someone who lives in the belly of the urban beast, let me assure you that hipsters today are all about growing elaborately sculpted and maintained facial hair and getting $60 haircuts and beard trims at “retro” barbershops with extremely on-the-nose names, to give you just one example within electric-scooter-riding radius from my house. Ditto, who seems more plugged in to the zeitgeist, is right to “Huh?” at you in slack-jawed shock as he imagines you walking into some dive bar simulacrum and ordering a $17 cocktail only to have the handlebar-mustachio’d bartender laugh in your Don Johnson-esque face.