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Blondie, 12/20/20

The “Frosty the Snowman” and “Jingle Bells” parodies here are of course very easy to identify, but “It’s the most wonderful food season of all” is driving me crazy. Surely it’s not meant to be “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.” Surely. It doesn’t scan at all. I don’t expect much from legacy comics at this point, but I expect better than that.

Dustin, 12/20/20

It’s no secret that I genuinely loathe Dustin’s dad. But in the spirit of the season, I’m glad he’s having a good time engaging in his favorite Christmas celebration: watching It’s A Wonderful Life and drinking glass after glass of wine and pissing a lot, confident each time he stumbles into the bathroom that yes, he came in here to piss, he still has at least some tenuous grip on the world around him.

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/29/20

Hey, remember when our heroes went to Los Angeles for entertainment industry reasons a few months back and significant portions of the city burned to the ground? Well, at least Mopey Pete got something out of it: he encountered the obscure street name “Sunset Boulevard,” generally only known to LA locals, and he got some comics ideas out of it! Either that or the whole experience made him want to kill himself.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 11/29/20

Speaking of killing yourself, I guess today’s Mother Goose and Grimm is supposed to feature Mother Goose levitating in shock at the sight of a rat, but that is, uh, not the first thing I thought of when I saw this strip, let’s just say that.

Panels from Blondie, 11/29/20

If you worked at it, you could probably think of a grosser and more sexual sounding euphemism for eating leftovers out of the fridge than “I need another session with our turkey,” but honestly, why bother? “I need another session with our turkey” is already pretty bad.

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Blondie, 11/24/20

I genuinely enjoy the range of human facial expressions on display in the final panel here. Glasses Guy is interested, very interested, Token Carpool Lady is just beginning to shift from being intrigued to being disturbed, and Herb is miserable, absolutely miserable. Not sure what any of those emotions have to do with Dagwood’s gluttony, which should be entirely unsurprising to any of them, but I enjoy them nevertheless.

Dustin, 11/24/20

You can say a lot about Dustin’s retrograde cultural politics, and lord knows I have, but if you squint at it, it’s at least kind of progressive that they gave the self-loathing-dieting-verging-towards-eating-disorder to the dad character and not the mom. Anyway, I really like the last panel in today’s strip. He’s not even enjoying the donuts anymore, but he’s going to keep eating them anyway, presumably in a stubborn attempt to prove something to somebody.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/24/20

I’m also digging Sarah’s facial expression in panel two today. It’s clear she’s visualizing something like a digital anal thermometer that connects to your computer via Bluetooth, which the Morgan clinic will be happy to set you up with an installment plan for.

Gil Thorp, 11/24/20

Ah ha, finally we have the big fun moment in any Gil Thorp storyline, where the season’s two big plots are mashed awkwardly together. This football season those two plots are “Newcomer Corina Karenna is sexual catnip” and “two Mudlark QBs are duking it out for the top spot,” and the way they’re combining them is by having both boys come over to Corina’s house and engage in hand-to-hand combat, for … the starting QB job? Corinna’s affections? Doesn’t really matter, the important question is how oiled up they’re going to be while they do it.