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Gil Thorp, 10/22/24

Oh hey, remember the new guys introduced this year on the Mudlark football team? Well, I forgot to mention that one of them has this running bit where he says “yeet” all the time, not in a sentence or anything, just as a general exclamation. I’m actually kind of torn on how realistic that is, because it’s true that teenagers are generally goofy idiots who will repeatedly say a word they think is funny with no context, but also shouldn’t these guys be young enough to just think of “yeet” as a regular word? It’s a verb that means to hurl something away with great force, if you don’t know, although the Merriam-Webster Dictionary website says it also could be an interjection “used to express surprise, approval, or excited enthusiasm,” and if you can’t trust the dictionary about the sort of things teens say, who can you trust?

Beetle Bailey, 10/22/24

Julius, General Halftrack’s driver, is a character who doesn’t show up much in this strip — one of the only times I’ve ever name-checked him was in a 2004 post about Sarge having a gay panic dream, where both the comic and the post are something of a time capsule at this point — but I appreciate the nice, good look we’re getting at his extremely grim facial expression here. Not sure where the smart money was going on which of the Camp Swampy guys was going to Full Metal Jacket the place, but I know where it’s going now!

Blondie, 10/22/24

Hey guys, let’s check in on Blondie! The joke in today’s Blondie is that Dagwood is very depressed.

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Blondie, 10/9/24

I have to admit that, not being an artist myself, I’m sometimes a little hesitant to criticize comics art, especially when it comes to making sweeping statements about how exactly that art was produced when I realize I don’t have that much insider knowledge. I am, however, reasonably sure that, to create two panels of an open book just kind of sitting on the couch and resting (?) on a person’s thigh, the normal book-reading configuration we all know and love, one or more pieces of clip art may have been involved. It’s too bad, too, because it really distracts from a killer joke where a dad asks his daughter what she’s reading and she tells him but then it turns out she’s lied about it, I guess, and has actually tucked a phone inside her book, the normal phone-using configuration we all know and love.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/9/24

I like Lukey and Snuff’s shock and horror in the second panel and refusal to play along with the Sheriff’s jape in the third. Hootin’ Holler may be a notorious haven for criminals of various types, but they draw the line at stealing horses, possibly because it seems very ambitious and who wants to put in that kind of effort.

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Gearhead Gertie, 10/3/24

Now, I might be an Ivy League-educated coastal elitist, but the Ivy League school I attended was in fact located in the Finger Lakes, and I know that they’ll just let any schmo drive on at least one NASCAR track, so I assume this is probably true elsewhere? Not going to bother researching that, I’m just saying, this panel is predicated on the idea that Gertie is doing something crazy when in fact she’s doing something very normal for a NASCAR obsessive such as herself. I don’t usually take sides in comic strip marital spats but her husband needs to chill out!

Blondie, 10/3/24

Blondie is a strip I very much never think of as “visually interesting,” so I do have to give props to Dagwood’s thought balloon in the first panel, which wraps around the door to match his imagined sausage garland placement. On the other hand, his wink is pure nightmare fuel, and the idea of “pizza-shaped pillows” … that’s just round! That’s not epic at all! Look, Alexander, there’s a pizza-shaped pillow on the couch right next to you!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/3/24

You know, if Mud Mountain only pretended to be the first guy in history who ever had his personality genuinely improved after joining an obviously fake scam self-help cult, just so he could lull Truck into complacency and get an invitation to perform together again, at which point he plans to pull off his patented move — pretending to shit his pants on stage — well, I for one will have no choice but to respect it.