Dustin, 6/18/22
“What I’m trying to say, kid, is that when you get old, your body goes to shit. But also, you stop feeling inconvenient emotions. So it honestly it’s a mixed bag.”
Blondie, 6/18/22
This strip thinks the real tragedy is that these kids are so obsessed with their phones that they’ll never know the true joy of playing together in the park. But to me, the tragedy is that Elmo thought Dagwood was his friend, but apparently the feeling isn’t mutual.
Blondie, 6/14/22
The first panel of today’s strip sent me into an emotional state that, if you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you know I experience far too often: indignation that a comic character’s whole longstanding deal is being ignored for the sake of a joke! OK, sure, Blondie started her catering business in 1991, which was a full 61 years after this strip was started, but it was also 31 years ago, so I think it counts as pretty well-established, and the lore is that Blondie and Tootsie run a full-on catering business, not a “sandwich shop.” But by the time I got to the end of this strip, I realized what was happening: this guy is one of Dagwood’s buddies from the online forums for real sandwich sickos hosted on the dark web. Anonymity on those sites is the rule of the day so that people can post their innermost desires without fear, but Dagwood managed to dox this guy and told Blondie just to say “the s word,” as the sandwich community puts, and she’d get a loan in no time. And people say Dagwood’s lazy! He’d do anything for his wife, even betray the most sacred trust among sandwichlads.
Dennis the Menace, 6/14/22
Dennis at age 6 realizing that sating one’s appetites to excess can rob those appetites of their pleasure, yet pressing on with mindless consumption nonetheless: reaching a new threshold of personal self-menacing. Or he’s just disgusting and covered with bits of food, one or the other.
Dick Tracy, 6/14/22
Look, Dick Tracy, none of us are interested in playing “the long game” with you and filing these little clues away for payoffs months or years in the future, OK? We want one thing out of you, and it’s murders, murders, murders.
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