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Blondie, 8/28/17

I genuinely enjoyed today’s Blondie because it does a little switcheroo by playing on a couple different things we know about Dagwood. Like, we know Dagwood is bad at his job. Really bad! I feel like we don’t dwell on this enough. I know Mr. Dithers is supposed to be an impossible-to-please tyrant, but everything we see about Dagwood’s work life — the napping at his desk, the way he’s always surfing food porn during business hours, the offhand references to all the presentations he screws up — points to him being genuinely incompetent. Which is kind of interesting, considering he’s the protagonist of the strip! Anyway, it’s in character, and actually funny, to get two panels of mounting panic email because he completely failed to wrap up everything he was supposed to take care of before he left on vacation.

But then, in panel three, we abruptly shift gears, and realize those emails are about something else we know about Dagwood: that he is a limitless appetite, a nightmarish spatial anomaly who can take any amount of foodstuff down his infinite gullet. Just imagine Lou at the diner, the sloshing sea of subpar chili reaching his chin. “Who usually ate all this,” he asks, baffled. “Where is it coming from? Where does it usually go?” He can hardly breathe from the smell. “Where’s Dagwood? Why didn’t Dagwood tell us he was leaving? Why didn’t we make plans?”

Mary Worth, 8/28/17

“Poor Dawn! She’ll be devastated! This will work out great for me, a guy who definitely wants to sleep with her but doesn’t have much to offer beyond being ‘nicer’ than an actual adulterer!”

Slylock Fox, 8/28/17

Having eliminated all crime in the new animal-ruled world, Slylock is keeping himself entertained by just pointing out when his least favorite animals do things incorrectly.

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Hi and Lois, 8/22/17

A friend of mine, whose family I knew belonged to a posh country club, was once telling me about summer jobs he had as a kid, and I asked him if he’d ever worked at the club, like as a waiter or something. He looked at me very strangely and then explained that members or their family taking jobs at the club was simply not done. What I’m trying to say, Recurring Hi and Lois Garbagemen Characters Who Probably Have Names That I Don’t Remember, is that it doesn’t matter how you dress: you’ll never be their peers, and the fact that you’re acting as if you could be will only give rise to confusion and then contempt.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/22/17

You know, I make fun of the Funkyverse’s unrelenting grimness a lot, but given that human happiness in this strip mostly leaves me feeling vaguely nauseated, maybe I should count my blessings?

Blondie, 8/22/17

A cool thing about being a syndicated cartoonist: if you encounter an annoyance or indignity in your everyday life, no matter how small or petty, you can complain about it to millions of newspaper readers!

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Mary Worth, 8/19/17

HOW TO CONVINCE A GAL TO DO SEX WITH YOU:

1. Give responses that indicate that you’ve listened to at least the last couple of sentences she’s said. Example:

DAWN: It was difficult integrating my relationships with both of my parents, what with them living so far apart.

DR. NED: [PROCESSING DATASET: “CONNECTICUT”, “SANTA ROYALE”] Yes, it certainly is enriching to have lived in two widely separated locations!

2. Block her means of egress, initiate simultaneous physical and eye contact, and remind her that you remember what her name is. Example:

DR. NED: [SCANNING MEMORY: WHAT IS THIS ONE CALLED AGAIN?] Dawn…

Beetle Bailey, 8/19/17

Beetle is the victim of unrelenting physical abuse, and the church is only willing to do lip service when it comes to protecting him from harm.

Blondie, 8/19/17

“[enters staring at iPad] Ever use mobile apps, Mr. B?”: What an old person thinks a young person is like.