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Archive: Blondie

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What if we just make him bad in the sense that the kids mean when they say something they like is “bad”

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Blondie, 6/9/22

We all talk a lot about how Dagwood wears a full-on tuxedo every day to work, which none of his coworkers do — Mr. Dithers doesn’t even wear a suit jacket! — and that this is truly bizarre behavior, would make him a social pariah, is probably the result of some kind of personality disorder or maybe he lost a bet, etc. However, one thing I feel like we’ve never discussed is that he must be unpleasantly hot, like all the time. Yet he defiantly eschews any attempts to mitigate this, even to the extent of taking off his jacket, which I assume means that he’s also just drenched in sweat, constantly, over the course of his workday. A fun thing to imagine as he’s getting yelled at for goofing off, that he must smell pretty bad too!

Gasoline Alley, 6/9/22

I haven’t been keeping you up to date on Gasoline Alley because … well, I mean, why would I. I wouldn’t enjoy typing it out any more than you would be able to muster up enthusiasm for reading it. I will merely give you the bare bones — that back at the end of March Rufus and Joel were told that the the “Hollywood folks” were looking for them, and now, two and half months later, having intended to travel to Hollywood, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, they have mistakenly arrived in the city of Hollywood, Florida, instead. Even this is probably more Gasoline Alley plot information that you ever wanted or needed, but it’s important to set up today’s good news, which is that Joel and Rufus appear to be dying, so we probably won’t have to deal with any more Gasoline Alley plots ever again.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/9/22

“Yes, when I received the call from the man known as ‘the Street Sweeper’ asking if I could ‘cure crime,’ I did know that he had kidnapped the deceased at gunpoint and was refusing to hand him over to the police. But am I responsible for the carnage that happened seconds after I bluntly told him I couldn’t? Not according to my lawyer.” –Rex Morgan, in what most commentators will agree was one of the most disastrous interviews given on local TV news in a decade

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Feel like if you refer to your clothes as a “getup” you already have misgivings

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Shoe, 5/20/22

Look, Roz, I know you had to come up with an insult on the fly here, and so I guess I should be impressed by the extremely labored pun your mind just generated, but the truth is that it’s not just the Perfesser’s pants you should be roasting. Or are we meant to understand you find this garish pattern perfectly acceptable on a suit jacket, but somehow the matching pants put it over the line for you? I give you an A for effort but 5/10 on execution, keep working at it.

Blondie, 5/20/22

I’ve very intrigued by the question of how Dagwood’s posture and facial expression in the first panel fits in with the revelations over the rest of the strip. Is he expertly faking his usual cringe so Mr. Dithers won’t realize that he can’t hear a word of abuse? Or does Dithers’s diatribe have a physical force that still knocks Dagwood backwards, quite separate from its semantic content?

Mary Worth, 5/20/22

He’ll do anything for you, Toby. Anything. He’ll come down to where you work and engage in some extremely light PDA! Can you imagine a greater hero? I certainly can’t!

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Comics deal with the future (i.e., the present)

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The Lockhorns, 5/19/22

I’m pretty sure the first legacy comic to do a cryptocurrency joke was, shockingly, Snuffy Smith way back in 2015, although they just did a “bitcoin? what if a coin got bit? Wouldn’t that be funny????” joke. Nobody would ever accuse The Lockhorns of being innovative, but I respect that they wait until something like cryptocurrency has become a fairly well established part of our mental landscape before figuring out exactly how to fit it into its own internal universe. What they came up with is “Leroy has lost much of his paltry savings in the recent crypto crash but still keeps posting ‘HODL’ on Reddit and won’t shut up about crypto at parties,” which is 100% correct and I applaud it.

Blondie, 5/19/22

I was about to make an “Alexander, your father looks literally exactly like you, as if you were not sired by him in the normal human way but rather were grown in a vat from cells containing only his DNA, what possible reason do you have for saying he’s taking away from the quality of your social media,” but upon reflection I think the joke is about him smiling. Is … smiling bad now? Do the kids not smile anymore? Does Blondie, the strip that did a “You know what I miss? Chalkboards” gag two days ago, know more than me about acceptable facial expressions on Instagram? Truly this is one in a series of humbling moments.

Gil Thorp, 5/19/22

Climate change is accelerating, and you can find evidence of it everywhere. For instance, as the traditional saying goes, “Gil starts actually coaching in June, corn be heavy soon.” But it’s only mid-May and he’s already noticed one of his players is blind! Truly we are moving into uncharted territory.