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Blondie, 12/5/22

Look, I’ve grudgingly accepted that Elmo, a child to whom the Bumstead family is not related but who nevertheless just kind of hangs out at their house a lot, is a major recurring character in Blondie. But what I will not accept is jokes that are only about Elmo and his life, rather than jokes in which Elmo mainly exists to create opportunities for Dagwood to obsess about food or remark negatively about the kids today and their phones or whatever. You hear me? Nobody wants this. Nobody wants to open the comics pages in 10 years and check out the Sunday installment of Blondie and her Husband Dagwood’s Pal Elmo and think “Gee, Dagwood and Blondie haven’t been in this strip in a while now, have they?” So let’s just put the brakes on this right now.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/5/22

Funky Winkerbean continues to hurl towards its end point in which we learn that Summer was the product of a multi-generational time-travel program designed to cause her to transforms the world with her book about Westview. To that end, the janitor from the future ensured that her parents would reconnect at a high-school reunion. Future history was almost shattered when Les tried out one of the most dumb and convoluted jokes this strip has ever seen, but don’t worry, Lisa liked that sort of thing, I guess. Also, since Lisa only existed to birth Summer into existence, we can all feel better about her tragic death: she fulfilled her destiny and honestly ensuring that Summer had a mopey (and occasionally literally) haunted childhood would help push her towards a writer’s life, rather than becoming dangerously happy and well-adjusted.

Gil Thorp, 12/5/22

As the big game gets started on the field, Marty solemnly flips an AA chip on his own in his beloved wooden crate press box. Do you think Marty or Kaz or any of them ever bother asking Marty how he’s doing, how his recovery is going, whether they can ever be a source of strength or help to him? I doubt it. But he’s just going to keep calling the plays like he sees them, doing the best he can, one day at a time.

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Blondie, 12/1/22

I have to admit I find it interesting how Dagwood and Mr. Dithers silo off different types of interactions in their relationship. At the workplace, of course, it’s all falling asleep and emotional abuse. But a heartfelt, man-to-man discussion about their marriages and what makes them tick? That’s reserved for the formal dinners at white tablecloth restaurants that they have with alarming regularity for no reason anyone can fathom or explain.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/1/22

The general store is Hootin’ Holler’s only tenuous contact with the outside world and its money-based economic system, so you can forgive the locals for assuming that, if any new-fangled thing they hear rumors about ever arrives in the Holler, it will do so by manifesting on Silas’s shelves.

Six Chix, 12/1/22

Part of my job as a comics curmudgeon is to point out when a truly baffling Six Chix is truly baffling in a fun way. This is one of them! Sorry, I don’t make the rules, it just is. Ha ha, she bought a long blue wig and doesn’t know why!

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Blondie, 11/15/22

I love this comic, which is quite clearly the product of a person who has never encountered protests or union organizing (here collapsed into a generic “picket”) outside seeing them briefly on cable news framed in a vaguely negative way, and has no idea why they happen or how they work. Yes, definitely people are recruited into the abstract idea of a picket, and only when they turn down the opportunity to participate as if they were a teen in an afterschool special who just said no to drugs are they wooed with information on what the picket is actually about. That explains the “A ‘Nappy’ Makes Me ‘Happy”’ lady, who apparently thought she was going to a protest for equal rights for diaper fetishists.

Hi and Lois, 11/15/12

It was a particularly rough day at the office — so rough that Mr. Foofram had to use the time-reversing technology from Christopher Nolan’s film Tenet to extract a few extra hours of work from Hi, meaning he’s coming home older than he should be. Lois has told him that he needs to complain to the Department of Labor about this, as Foofram isn’t paying him overtime, but he won’t stand up for himself!