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Blondie, 6/22/23

Let’s put aside, for the moment, the fact we’re dealing with three famous (?) comics couples here. What are the circumstances under which you’d have any three couples together like this to talk to Blondie and Tootsie about vow-renewal catering? Like, do they just have office hours specifically for potential vow renewers to drop by and chat? Or are they all doing this together, a mass vow-renewal process? Are they friends? Or — and now, finally, we must return to the fact that we’ve got three beloved (???) comics couples on our hands — is this for copyright reasons, somehow, and what they’re actually “renewing” is the rights of their intellectual property holders to the concept of their coupledom?

Mary Worth, 6/22/23

Lyle Lovett! It’s bad enough that you’re running an illegal underground dog-fighting ring. But now you’re drunk on the job? Try to show a little pride in your terrible, cruel work!

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Mary Worth, 6/5/23

Haha, remember how when Saul Wynter was first introduced to this strip, Toby made a big show of not liking him, and when his original, pre-Greta dog died, Toby reported the news with a certain amount of — well, not glee, exactly, but the vibe was less “this is a true tragedy” than “ha ha, an old man is emotionally in turmoil, can’t wait to relay this little morsel of gossip!” So anyway, that’s why Mary has to emphasize to her that “Look, if you see the dog, do not just say to yourself, ‘Oh, that’s Saul’s dumb little dog,’ and then go on with your day, and when Ian sees that you have a little smile and asks you what you’re thinking about you just say ‘Oh, nothing.’ Please tell me, OK?”

Blondie, 6/5/23

Look, I’m not going to say that I would pay $200 a week for lawn maintenance, but I don’t have a huge suburban lawn and an HOA that would threaten to put a lein on my house if the grass was longer than half an inch like the Bumsteads probably do. I also feel like any time Blondie brings up the question of pricing for the sort of services that upper-middle-class people might avail themselves of, the attitude is usually “Oh, you think your labor has value? You think your riding mower is a capital expense for your business that needs to be recouped, rather than the fun toy that I would treat it as if I owned it? Well an exaggerated version of you is about to be cut down to size in a nationally syndicated newspaper comic strip that I inherited, buddy!”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/29/23

You might think that the inhabitants of Hootin’ Holler would object to the fact their only clergyman is a grifter and fraud. But in truth, for these rural folk, the niceties of organized religion are of little interest, as their spiritual world is dominated by essentially pagan beliefs in signs given by nature and the practice of folk magic.

Dennis the Menace, 5/29/23

That’s not to give followers of monotheistic creeds too much credit, of course; many, like Dennis, will menace generations of sophisticated theologians by simply treating God as a source of apotropaic power, a shortcut to get out of a bind rather than a mystery to contemplate.

Blondie, 5/29/23

Speaking of mysteries, do you think Dagwood has lied to these kids and told him that he’s a combat veteran, so they’re leaving him alone to give him time to contemplate his fallen comrades? Or is their attitude just something like “Well, I guess he respects the troops, so we won’t fuck with him and make his life miserable … today, anyway.”

Shoe, 5/29/23

CONFIRMED: traitors to birdkind in the Shoe universe are punished by ritual execution and cannibalism.