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Blondie, 8/16/24

This strip may on first read seem entirely incoherent, but I actually think it nicely captures many people’s instinctive take on generative AI. Delicious, chemically infused slop dished up a vaguely burger-flavored form? Yum yum, bring it on! Uncanny valley content slop that you find when desperately searching for information or recipes online or looking at pictures on Facebook? Ugh, no, gross, absolutely not, kill it with fire.

Judge Parker, 8/16/24

Think I’m siding with mom here. Oh, you think your little underwater sojourn has helped you solve the mystery of the missing dad? Well, have you considered that the missing dad is going to be dead forever, whereas this party is alive and bumpin’ for just a few more hours? Why do you have to ruin it now, when we’ve already spent all this money on nice hors d’oeuvres?

Family Circus, 8/16/24

Sorry, Dolly, if you can’t even rope in your stupidest sibling, I don’t think your plan to declare yourself a God manifest on Earth and demand worship is going to work out.

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Family Circus, 8/9/24

“Steve Tracy” here annoys me so much, because it feels like I’m supposed to know who he is, and despite being the Comics Curmudgeon I do not waste my valuable and declining brain cells on non-Keane Family Circus characters, OK? I guess he’s supposed to be one of Billy’s little friends, who in general don’t seem to recur as characters, possibly because Billy is pretty off-putting. Anyway, Billy, did you know that the Olympics are in France? Do you think “Steve Tracy” or any of your other shitty little friends have the financial resources or cultural savvy to go to France? What a frankly ludicrous notion.

Blondie, 8/9/24

Say what you will about Dagwood Bumstead, but he is a man capable of truly herculean feats of gastronomical engineering, routinely constructing improbably enormous sandwiches and stacking rows of plates up his arms for easier transport. The fact that he’s capable of expressing such cartoonish excitement about the fact that Blondie has arranged five eggs in a vaguely Olympic rings-shaped tableau on a serving dish just proves that he’s as down bad for her as he ever was, which after all these years is honestly quite sweet.

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Blondie, 8/2/24

It’s always been very clear that Blondie takes place in one of the most whitebread towns imaginable, but I still think it’s pretty funny that (a) Lou knew that three years ago there would’ve been riots if he had tried to do anything with a Japanese theme so he just stuck to Olympic generics and (b) he also knew that even his “French” menu items had to actually just be American foods with “French” in the name, again, because of the riots. France! The country that loves meat and bread! The country that deep fries a ham sandwich and puts an egg on it! Once I was in Paris and I ordered something from the menu that that to my jet-lagged high-school-French-educated mind sounded good but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was and it turned out to be a plate of prosciutto with a stick of butter on it! And it was amazing! I think Dagwood, of all people, could handle it! Instead here he is, holding up an Olympic 10 scorecard that he presumably wrestled away from someone in his carpool because he’s not being offered anything “weird.” This is, in fact, profoundly sad.

Dennis the Menace, 8/2/24

I guess it’s not as sad as Mr. Wilson taking his Dennis Mitchell Derangement Syndrome everywhere he goes. George, this man has no idea who or what you’re talking about! He sees 20 patients a day and doesn’t remember who you are, he’s just reading something he scribbled last year on your chart! You’re embarrassing yourself!

Gasoline Alley, 8/2/24

Sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date on Gasoline Alley but there was a little mishap involving Walt and the Frank Nelson tree cutter guy, where one thing led to another but it all worked out in the end and he got $500 knocked off his bill for his trouble, which means that he’s now able to do a little light insurance fraud, aided by the Almighty Himself.

Judge Parker, 8/2/24

“Ah shit! Once I realized that wasn’t my dad’s corpse in the water, I figured this was going to be some dark psychological trauma plotline and I didn’t have to tell anyone about it! I forgot that all middle aged men in this strip look pretty much exactly the same! Ah shit!”