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Blondie, 12/20/22

I’m reasonably sure that we’ve never seen Dagwood and his “fishing buddy” Herb ever actually go fishing? Maybe there was talk of fishing gear borrowed and never returned, or some bit set up by a powerboat (not a rowboat) parked in Herb’s driveway? This makes me suspect that today’s strip was built backwards from a punchline about “what if a Christmas fruitcake was an anchor???? because it’s so hard and dense, get it????”, which itself is a common misunderstanding of fruitcake’s whole deal (fruitcakes are, if done right, actually very moist) that has arisen since nobody eats fruitcakes anymore and we only know about them from old jokes about bad ones. Anyway, mostly what I’m interested in here is that the salesman at this store, which I assume is a chain that caters to suburbanites like Dagwood who very occasionally go fishing, has been forced to put on a ridiculous get-up and even grow a chinbeard just to provide a “full nautical experience” for customers. Probably he had to sit through a whole training from corporate about how if you don’t say “Ahoy matey!” to everyone who walks in the door, with enthusiasm, you’ll get written up by your shift supervisor.

Hagar the Horrible, 12/20/22

Based on everyone’s sour expressions here, I guess the joke here is that Hagar is obviously guilty, but that his lawyer has discovered some technical loophole to free him that the judge and jury are bound to obey, even though they clearly don’t like it. This being medieval Norway, the loophole is probably that, despite a recent move towards a written legal system where courts attempt to ascertain the facts of a case and hand down judgements based on an objective moral code, it’s still technically legal to resolve disputes via trial by combat, and Hagar’s accuser is currently lying in a bloody, dismembered heap on the floor.

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Blondie, 12/17/22

I spent a probably embarrassing amount of time staring at this thinking “Which of the third-tier Blondie characters is this dressed up as Santa at the bowling alley with Dagwood and Herb? Is it one of the carpool guys, or maybe the barber?” before I realized that … it’s supposed to actually be Santa, I think? Santa is real, within the Blondie universe? He’s real and he goes bowling with random suburbanites, just days before Christmas, in what should be his workshop’s busiest time of year?

Pluggers, 12/17/22

I guess that’s better than the Pluggers universe, where Santa is also real — a real freakish man-animal of some kind, that is, and he also treats body positivity as a weird series of contests.

Gasoline Alley, 12/17/22

Gertie, “Who’s On First” hit the peak of its popularity in the 1940s! I’m pretty sure you’re too young to know about it.

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Dustin, 12/7/22

If you had asked me before today, I would have said with some conviction that Blondie and Dustin both fell into the category of “comics I read every day but do not particularly like.” Nevertheless, the past couple days have provided me with some surprising information about the nuances of my opinions: I think Elmo-only strips are a violation of the Bumstead-centered narrative unity of the Blondieverse, whereas Dustin strips in which the Dustin family doesn’t appear, and instead the only recurring character is the weird little neighbor kid Dustin is inappropriately friends with? Sure, go nuts, doesn’t bother me a bit. Oh, do you want to do a joke with him talking to a mall Santa, but the joke only makes sense if the guy is actually Santa, throwing things into further narrative confusion? I already told you I don’t give a shit and this won’t change my position on shit-giving, sorry.

Blondie, 12/7/22

Speaking of Blondie and liking or not liking things, one thing I do like about this strip is that Dagwood and his mailman genuinely do not like each other. The mailman is absolutely justified, of course, as Dagwood repeatedly flings open the door and runs into him at full speed on the way to his carpool, scattering mail everywhere. I’m not sure what Dagwood’s beef is, but his animus is fairly clear.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/7/22

Ah, yes, we’ve hit the Wall Of Text phase of this time travel exposition dump, as we learn that the time travel business is apparently responsible for the weird Crankshaft/Funky Winkerbean chronological discontinuity that’s exercised so many of our best minds over the past decade. Our future janitor is also proving that knowing how to control the timestream doesn’t mean you know everything; if he thinks that Summer is basically done writing her book now that she’s decided what she wants to write about and has taken some preliminary notes, I would like to refer him to the three years it took for me to get from my Kickstarter to my novel, and also refer to him to the experience of everyone else in human history who’s ever written a book.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/7/22

Good news for everyone who plays by the rules, everyone! Remember Wanda, the comely diner waitress who was shamelessly flirting with Mud? Well, now she’s going to make herself sexually available to Truck, as his reward for doing the music business “the right way” (i.e., he doesn’t pretend to shit his pants on stage but also doesn’t make any money). Who’s the loser now, Mud?