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Gasoline Alley, 6/11/24

So, the reason the electricity went out at Walt’s is that a big tree fell over and pulled down the power line running from the utility pole to the house, and now some guys from the power company have come out in the middle of the night to repair it. This is, obviously, annoying, and could easily be the most annoying thing that would happen to you in a given year, if your year was pretty good overall, but I do not think it could in any way be described as an “unbelievable ordeal.” It’s actually quite easy to believe! You think Walt and Gertie are going to describe it to other people and they’ll say “My God, you can’t be serious”? No, it’ll be more like “Oh wow, that sounds annoying. Nice that the power company came out to fix it in the middle of the night, though.”

Dick Tracy, 6/11/24

If we’re going to go through the trouble of continuing to make Dick Tracy comics, then I suppose part of that process has to be about exploring how Dick Tracy and his friends and foes would interact with modern-day stuff. I feel ambivalent about it, but I respect that they want to do it rather than just rehash golden age Dick Tracy stuff endlessly, and I have to say that I am marginally more intrigued to find out what Dick Tracy thinks about cryptocurrency than I was to find out what he thinks about furries.

Bizarro, 6/11/24

There are two things I love about this comic. The first is that the snowman outside the apartment has clearly spent a lot of time sculpting his snow-body into the flowing shape of a ethereal spectre, but is big enough to recognize that his friend’s cheap prop humor is more likely to win kudos than his own more subtle work. The second is that Bizarro has, in a bold refusal to adhere to conventions, chosen to do a joke about snowmen going to a Halloween party in the middle of the summer.

The Phantom, 6/11/24

A classic bit I do on my blog is to look at a day’s comic and say “Ha ha, surely the next development in this strip will be [something that is far too silly to ever happen in a comic strip]”, and a classic bit that the comics do in response is to produce a subsequent development that’s substantially sillier than I predicted. Anyway, I apologize for joking that “Space-Ox,” the private rocket company in the current Phantom storyline, is run by Elon Musk Ox (he’s just like Elon Musk, but also an ox). In fact, it’s run by Ian Mollusk (he’s just like Elon Musk, but also a snail).

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Bizarro, 3/23/24

One of my goals in this blog is to get you all to appreciate the comics as a fundamentally visual medium. You could describe a comic where the punchline is that a chicken is working in a diner and serves eggs that it just laid. But what makes this comic good is the smug and just vaguely sexual expression on the chicken’s face, along with the human customer’s expression indicating that he gets everything that’s going on here, he’s extremely disgusted, and yet feels he has no choice but to eat the eggs anyway.

Dick Tracy, 3/23/24

You ever forget how many days there are in a week? You ever forget how many days there are in a week when your job involves creating a specific number of creative works tied to the number of days in a week? I think a nice thing to do if you find yourself in that situation is to just let your characters enjoy a nice dessert before moving on with their story.

Slylock Fox, 3/23/24

It’s truly demeaning what the animals in the Slylockverse had to put up with in the days and weeks after the moment when they achieved sentience but still had to obey outdated human law. It wouldn’t be long after the moment captured here when the dog would be wearing the police uniform and the policeman would be in a mass grave. The squirrel knows the horror that awaits!

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Bizarro and Six Chix, 2/2/24

Were you, as an adolescent, fascinated by Dante’s Inferno, and in particular by the book’s weird geography, in which hell is a kind of cone under the Earth’s surface, with each “circle” a ledge on which some ironic and awful punishment is dished out on unfortunate sinners? Or were you, unlike me, normal? If the former, you are truly primed to appreciate and perhaps even create today’s Six Chix, which some might fight offensive to Italians but I consider a true delight even though the pun is a little bit of a stretch. If the latter, you might produce today’s other Dante comic. Get it, OMG=”Divine” and LOL=”Comedy”? This is the product of the normie mind and frankly doesn’t deserve the label “bizarre” at all.

Pardon My Planet, 2/2/24

If one of your deep-seated fantasies is cruelly taunting women on social media for going to the bathroom, because you get off on the idea of them having to sit there uncomfortably and hold it until your issue your approval via Facebook comments, then I guess it’s better to write a syndicated newspaper comic strip about it than it is to actually do it? Like, more people will know about it from a comic, which is bad, because nobody should know about this, it’s obviously very shameful, but at least you’re not actually targeting any specific women, and women in general now have a pretty good sense that they should steer clear of you.

Beetle Bailey, 2/2/24

Ha ha, artificial intelligence, am I right? It would certainly be crazy if AI were to replace Beetle and Sarge. Now I know what you’re thinking: given that today’s strip involves a close up on our two characters whose facial expressions barely change and who are standing in a featureless, backgroundless void, how do we know that AI hasn’t already replaced them, in the sense of writing this strip? Well, just as an experiment, I asked ChatGPT to write a Beetle Bailey on this topic:

Yes, well, there you have it: the soulless machine produces dialogue even less funny than the Walker-Browne Humor Industries LLC sweatshop, somehow tries to drag things out over four panels like this is 1959 and the comics pages have infinite space to fill, gets minor details wrong (have you ever seen “polishing boots” as one of Beetle’s assigned tasks?), and seems to think that Beetle and Sarge like each other.

But what about comics bloggers? Could they be replaced by a shiny cybernetic robot?

I feel like this is something that would’ve shocked every ’60s sci-fi writer churning out pulp novels and short stories about killer robots while out of their mind on benzedrine, but the thing about AI is that it isn’t mean enough to be funny. It’s called the Comics Curmudgeon, you pablum-spewing chatbot! Get back to me when you’re prepared to say that Beetle and Sarge engaging in “banter” isn’t enjoyable for anyone!

Anyway, tune in next time, dear readers, as we explore the unpredictable landscapes of the funny pages. Until then, keep those comics coming, and don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments. Over and out!