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Mary Worth, 6/11/23

Yes, blah blah, Saul breaks down sobbing because his beloved Greta has become bait for for fighting dogs (DO NOT WORRY, THERE IS ZERO CHANCE THAT A DOG IS GOING TO DIE HORRIBLY IN A MARY WORTH PLOT, GRETA WILL BE FINE), but what I want to focus on is that Mary sets this up with “I was reading the paper, and also watching the news on television.” We get it Mary, you have a diverse and varied news diet (made up of sources that were widely known before before 2001 or so).

Bizarro, 6/11/23

I know that the “oh, is there a Mrs. Potato Head?” genre of joke is tempting, but — and I’m sorry to be a killjoy — it would work a lot better if not for the fact that there is a Mrs. Potato Head, and she was introduced as part of the Potato Head extended universe in 1953, just a year after Mr. Potato Head debuted, and she appeared, voiced by Estelle Harris, most famous for playing George’s mother on Seinfeld, in three different Toy Story movies. That said, I appreciate the route this strip took with it, which is to imagine a human woman married to a literal plastic toy, whose eyes sometimes fall out when you’re in bed with it, as you would expect them to.

Family Circus, 6/11/23

Gotta go with Dolly as having the best imagination of the Keane Kids here. She’s dreaming of unleashing some ancient Pharaonic curse onto her family, and frankly I’m rooting for her.

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Gasoline Alley, 1/21/23

Does anyone put a lot of energy into predicting how Gasoline Alley plots will get resolved? Like, no one does, right? Not even me? Well, let’s pretend we all do for the sake of this next joke, OK? [clears throat] Wow, I don’t think any of us had “Santa’s prayers were answered by a hot new she-elf showing up, causing Bunky to abandon his plans for an exciting, independent adventure and instead pledge another century of his eternal (?) life to serving Santa, due to horniness” on our Gasoline Alley plot resolution bingo card, which is a thing we all definitely maintain!

Bizarro, 1/21/23

I guess Bizarro has finally figured out what it takes to get noticed on this blog, and it’s weird interspecies sex stuff. One thing I enjoy about this panel is that usually in gags where a fish has crawled up onto a barren shore, we’re supposed to imagine it representing the first vertebrate colonizing the land sometime in the late Devonian period, but here our brave fish encounters a tiger, meaning that at the very earliest we’re several hundred million years later in the Miocene. That fish isn’t an evolutionary pioneer or anything, it just wants to fuck a mammal.

Beetle Bailey, 1/21/23

I’m sorry, I think all of us have always assumed over years reading this strip that Sarge is functionally illiterate. This “joke” is not very good, and certainly not worth forcing me to completely restructure my idea of what Sarge is all about to accommodate the possibility that he can write a restaurant review! “But Josh,” you’re probably saying, “this is a one-off joke that will never be referenced again,” but sorry, it’s canon now and I have to update the wiki and everything, how dare they do this to me personally

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Bizarro, 7/2/21

Hey, guys! Do you know how amphibians reproduce? In turns out that in a lot of species, the females lay unfertilized eggs in water, and then later the males come along and ejaculate onto them. Do, uh, do you think any of the people involved in the editorial process that ended with this cartoon being published in newspapers everywhere know this? Anyway, I know I don’t usually talk about Bizarro here, but felt compelled to point out that the strip today went where Hagar the Horrible doesn’t dare; I checked my archives to see if I had ever discussed Bizarro before, and it turns that (a) sometimes Uncle Lumpy does when he fills in for me and (b) this isn’t even the first time it’s done a “so how exactly does human-mermaid sex work” panel.

Dennis the Menace, 7/2/21

Wow, remember like two weeks ago when Henry was all like, “my wife commands me and I must obey?” Well, I guess he’s still saying that, but he seems a lot less turned on by it at this point.