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Blondie, 5/12/22

You ever stare at a sentence for a long stretch of time and become increasingly convinced that it doesn’t really make sense as something a native speaker of 21st century American English would say? Probably not, as you don’t have a semi-successful comics blog you’ve got to churn out content for every day, but the point is that “How much are you wanting?” fell into that category, for me, until I finally convinced myself that it would sound right if it were in a comical fake Irish accent from an old-timey movie. “How much are ye wanting then, lads?” See, doesn’t that sound better? Or at least funnier? Wouldn’t it be funnier if Dagwood spoke in a comical Irish accent? Have I finally cracked the code necessary to read Blondie every day and find it funny, after all these years?

Hi and Lois, 5/12/22

“Is that why your face is constantly immobile, your mouth perpetually in an O of surprise? The price of beauty is wearing a dead mask, every day of your life?”

The Lockhorns, 5/12/22

The long, unkempt beards of Greek philosophers were meant to signify that they were so invested in the life of the mind that they couldn’t be bothered to concern themselves with ordinary, quotidian matters like hygiene, and in the early 20th century, many men at Ivy League colleges indulged in a similar aesthetic impulse for similar reasons, making a vogue out of a disheveled, slovenly style of dress. In the 1940s, students at the elite women’s colleges cast off their girdles and began to imitate their male counterparts, and a key part of their new uniform was a baggy cardigan referred to as a “sloppy joe sweater.” This is a long-winded way of me saying that fine, I admit it, I was wrong, the Lockhorns are definitely not Millennials.

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Gasoline Alley, 5/1/22

I gotta say, this Gasoline Alley was a real journey for me, in the sense that the opening title led me to hope that, finally, Rufus and Joel, my least favorite characters out of a cast in which I don’t like anybody, would be horribly murdered by some kind of undead fiend who drained their bodies of blood, but then it turns out to be some kind of weird meta-thing involving people and details I refuse to research further. On the bright side, though, we do get pretty solid confirmation at the end that our rustic duo are thoroughly illiterate.

Blondie, 5/1/22

Look, if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when comics stretch out what could’ve been been a weekday strip to fill the Sunday panels and trash all their world-building and continuity in the process. What I’m saying is that Dagwood has exactly one friend, and it’s Herb, and they don’t even like each other. I have no idea who these other two people are. I assume they’re Dagwood’s neighbors whom he vaguely knows, and they’re being a lot more polite about this than I would be.

Mary Worth, 5/1/22

Mary Worth, on the other hand, often does a pretty good job of doing a Sunday strip that’s mostly a recap of the week’s plot but contains one little detail that rewards you for reading it in addition to the dailies. Today, that detail is Ian’s little note in the fourth panel. Ian is 100% a guy who would have an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student that was destined to leave her emotionally fucked up for decades and then write “with much affection” in her yearbook.

Pluggers, 5/1/22

Hey, look, buddy, the point of Pluggers is to use furries to illustrate down-home real American anecdotes that manage to be self-deprecating and smug at the same time, OK? It is not a venue for working out your extremely petty and very specific marital grievances, do better everybody

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Dennis the Menace, 4/27/22

I guess you eventually get bored revealing your parents’ shit-talk in front of their guests and have to move onto some real hardcore menacing, like playing sick mind games with your pets. Hot Dog has always been by far the secondary Mitchell critter, but Dennis knows how to turn his fickle charms on a dime to real cause emotional chaos. Dennis’s praise boils down to “I like you because, like me, you don’t have emotional attachments,” but Hot Dog clearly is overjoyed to briefly be the center of attention. Ruff, meanwhile, is utterly devastated by this development.

Blondie, 4/27/22

Look, obviously comics are a visually whimsical medium and part of the gimmick of Blondie is the contrast in the cartoonish proportions of tall and gangly Dagwood and short and stumpy Mr. Dithers. But for some reason I think it’s pretty jarring to make it very obvious that Dithers’s shoulders are level with the countertop, and somehow putting a photorealistic coffeemaker on that countertop just makes it worse.

Dick Tracy, 4/27/22

Ha, yes, if there’s one thing the cops are always very concerned about it’s the violent drama among marginal criminal characters. “Well, we let the guy who kidnapped your girlfriend back on the street,” says Dick, “but if he causes more trouble, have you considered calling the police? The non-emergency number, please.”