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Between Friends, 10/5/23

Many years ago, when I first started this blog, it was called “I Read The Comics So You Don’t Have To,” and sometimes I feel I’ve lost sight of that missions, so, here you go: Between Friends has been doing an on-again-off-again plot for it seems like weeks where Susan here is on Zoom with a coworker who has young kids and is very excited about getting away from them for a few days on a work trip. This is, I do not deny, hashtag relatable, but there’s just been so much of it, and if you’re just seeing this strip in isolation, you’re probably like, “I don’t see why it’s worth complaining about,” but trust me: I have read the comics so you don’t have to, and I’m here to tell you that it’s gotten real old and shows no sign of not getting older. I feel like today’s strip, which is just a bunch of dialogue coming out of a computer screen while a person makes various facial expressions in response, is particularly egregious. There’s a lot to say about the post-lockdown persistence of white collar work-from-home jobs, and as a longtime home office worker I’m generally in favor of the trend, but it’s a real problem for comic strips that rely on people interacting at work for visual interest.

Hi and Lois, 10/5/23

Man, I wish I could get as excited about anything as this child is hearing an old man talk about the last 30 years of technological progress! Or, well, given the medium and its current readership, I guess I should say I wish I could get as excited about anything as this child is in this fantasy deliberately engineered to make old people feel like children might be interested in what they have to say.

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Beetle Bailey, 9/5/23

A lot of Beetle Bailey’s M.O. boils down to “We thought of a joke, which of our long-ish list of one-note characters that we’ve accrued over the years can we assign it to?” Reading panel one, I though Rocky, as the camp’s resident rock-and-roll loving bad boy, was a bad choice for this, but once I realized it was about one of the soldiers being rejected by his family and forced to make a home in a cruel institution that doesn’t want him either, I changed my mind, this is a good one.

Dick Tracy, 9/5/23

Look, this may be a “Minit Mystery,” but do we have time to spend a whole strip on some Grade A Wholly Innocent [change this later if necessary –Eds] Beefcake? Yes, yes we do.

Dustin, 9/5/23

“Ha ha, get it? Wait, no, actually, that metaphor doesn’t really make sense. Sorry, I’m still workshopping this bit. Anyway, long story short, you’re dying.”

Judge Parker, 9/5/23

I’m sorry, Gloria, are you keeping meticulous accounting records of a criminal fucking conspiracy?

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Hi and Lois, 9/2/23

If you want a glimpse of how in mid-century America, syndicated newspaper cartooning used to be your ticket to a comfortable life, consider the central position the great suburban participatory leisure sports of golf and tennis hold in our legacy strips! It’s a different time now, but these strips can still teach us a lot about the folkways of suburban Connecticut and similar communities, and if I’m reading today’s Hi and Lois right, those places are on the verge of civil war. Hi thinks he can just ride this one out on the golf course, but there will come a time, and soon, where he’ll have to take a side.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/2/23

Oh ho, it looks like Rene, aka “Professor Mirakle,” is back to tie up some loose ends, possibly by murdering his erstwhile disciple Mud! Ha ha, everyone will be real sorry they didn’t accept his apologies, once they find his bullet-ridden corpse in this hotel room three days from now! Honestly, though, it seems much more likely that Rene is just trying to get a cut of the money from Mud’s apparently quite lucrative Li’l Fergus character and the songs he co-wrote and/or inspired through fake guru powers. It would be funny to see an attempted murderer make use of the legal system to enforce his intellectual property claims, but honestly, it’s not like he hasn’t done it before.

Between Friends, 9/2/23

Sorry to this lady who is being abandoned by all her friends and family, but I will never get over the phrase “We live in a global world.” Do we? Is it a global world we live in? Is it really? Is that why you can use a globe to depict the world with such uncanny accuracy?