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Blondie, 8/31/17

OK, let’s pass over the “joke” of this strip, which is … I’m actually not sure, but I think it’s that Dagwood gave himself permission to gorge at a fancy (?) French (??) restaurant because of this costumed tout’s sob story. Let’s linger for a moment over “That must be a fun gig! Getting paid to wear a duck suit!” Like, he’s a little too into it, you know, and it makes me wonder if he’s secretly [GOOGLES “FURRIES BUT FOR BIRDS”][IMMEDIATELY REGRETS IT][NEVERTHELESS READS THE SECTION OF THE AVIAN ARTICLE ON WIKIFUR ABOUT VARIOUS TECHNIQUES FOR ANTHROPOMORPHIZING BIRD WINGS][BEGINS TO WONDER IF DAGWOOD’S BIZARRELY LONG THIGHS AND WEIRD BENT-KNEED GAIT ATTRACTS HIM TO DIGITGRADE SPECIES][HOW DEEP DOES THIS RABBIT HOLE GO][EXCEPT I GUESS IT’D BE A DUCK BLIND][OK LET’S JUST CALL THIS WHOLE THING OFF NOW]

Dennis the Menace, 8/31/17

Uhhh HEY Dennis the Menace, let’s have less of Dennis’s darndest-things-saying/fat-shaming and more of the backstory of why Mr. Wilson is still painfully hung over in what I assume is the middle of the afternoon???

Six Chix, 8/31/17

WHAT IS THAT DOOR ATTACHED TO

IN WHICH DIRECTION DOES IT “CLOSE”

WHAT IN GOD’S NAME IS GOING ON HERE

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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!