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Mary Worth, 4/12/23

Of the several minimum wage office temp jobs I held between semesters when I was in grad school, probably the best was the summer I spent in a vault under the Wells Fargo HQ in downtown San Francisco, helping alphabetize a huge collection of wills that had been entrusted to various regional banks that Wells Fargo had absorbed over the previous decade. This job was the “best” in the sense that we were let into the vault in the morning and ushered out at night and otherwise received no supervision, had no real set goals or other sense of how fast we were supposed to be going, could play music as loud as we wanted and take two-hour lunches, could answer the phone down there by saying “Hello, you’ve reached … The Vault” as if we were working at the city’s hottest nightclub, etc. Now, if you were someone who had in fact gvien your last will and testament to the San Luis Obispo Savings and Loan for safekeeping, my job activities that summer might’ve given you some pause, as we were definitely not trained in any kind of archival preservation techniques and even our alphabetizing was a little haphazard; but most of the wills we were dealing with had been filed decades earlier and had probably been superseded by newer ones, while the old forgotten wills had simply been passed from bank to bank, long after the customers’ deaths, until they ended up in our lap, because some cover-your-ass decision by the legal department mandated that Wells Fargo had to do the bare minimum to make any specific will in the pile findable in a pinch.

Anyway, I remember two things about the wills, which we temps absolutely would open up at random and read to one another: they often contained a lot of juicy family drama, especially concerning what were euphemistically referred to as the “natural children” of the person writing the will, and some of the names were very funny. Unfortunately, because this was 25 years ago and my brain has mostly puddingified in the interim, the only name from the list that I can remember specifically is “Stella Patella,” but you have to admit that’s a pretty good one! This has been a very long and roundabout way to say that I loved today’s Mary Worth because it taught me that one fun aspect of working at a vet is that you get to learn all the wild things people name their pets, which probably range from the very good to the very bad. It doesn’t make up for all the depressing euthanasia business, but I bet it’s pretty neat.

Gasoline Alley, 4/12/23

Ha ha, as easily predicted, these dumb children have immediately started blabbing to a resident of 1863 about how in the future ladies can be cops and other potentially timestream-wrecking business. “STOP HER,” hisses Ida Knoe, the evil time-travelling doll, “SHE’S LIABLE TO LET IT SLIP THAT WE ARE FROM THE FUTURE!” How many children has Ida Knoe brought backwards in time and then had to murder in order to keep the universe intact? Probably a lot! Too bad her programming (?) doesn’t allow her to learn from her mistakes.

Dennis the Menace, 4/12/23

Kudos, I guess, for Dennis the Menace having a gag where Dennis unleashes the sort of sick burn an actual six year old might use. Unfortunately, like many things an actual six year old would say, it isn’t particularly menacing, or particularly funny.

Blondie, 4/12/23

I find it interesting that we’re not seeing the full carpool in panel three. It’s only when Dagwood is finally alone with his most intimate friend that he can truly confess the sort of sick shit that plays in a loop in his brain 24/7.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/9/23

I actually find Sheriff Tait’s expression in the second panel of the middle row quite poignant. Why, he never meant any harm! He doesn’t even carry a gun! He never should’ve taken Snuffy’s shouts of “I’ll die before I spend anoth’r night in yore jail, Tait!” as mere bluff! What has he done?

Hi and Lois, 4/9/23

Trixie Flagston, the character, has existed for nearly 70 years, but is canonically an infant, so we’re meant to understand that she has experienced each of these milestones exactly once. What happens when she finally encounters the Tooth Fairy? Will the spell be broken? Will the Flagstons finally be freed from their time-prison and be allowed to age, or, blessedly, to die?

Shoe, 4/9/23

“The flags should be at half-mast — to mourn the baby I just killed when my ball landed in this nest! We’re birds, right? Eggs are babies, to us?”

Panels from Blondie, 4/9/23

The canonical gospels tell us various (and somewhat conflicting) stories about Jesus’s disciples learning about his resurrection. But we’ve never seen how his beloved dog reacted when he rose on the third day — until now.

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Beetle Bailey, 4/4/23

I think an underrated and probably quite realistic aspect of Beetle Bailey is that its motley crew of characters, thrown together by their duty to the military and forced to spend almost all their time with one another, for the most part don’t really care for each other and their relationships could degenerate into open brawling with very little provocation.

The Lockhorns, 4/4/23

It gives me no pleasure to say that this panel does not live up, in my opinion, to The Lockhorns’ usually high quality standards. There’s nothing realistic Loretta could’ve said that text-to-speak would’ve botched into the names of these objects, and I feel the choices of what we’re seeing are aiming for an “LOL so random” vibe that is not what we come here for. That said, it is very in character for Leroy to not ask for clarification but to instead buy all of these obviously incorrect items, perhaps spending his entire day going from store to store looking for them, just to come home and rub Loretta’s mistake in her face.

Blondie, 4/4/23

I don’t really have strong feelings about panels two or three of today’s Blondie. But the first panel? The one where a stone-faced news anchor announces “National Humor Month” next to a smiley-face graphic, while a curmudgeonly old man says “Humor month?! With all the problems in the world today?” It’s perfection. No notes.