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Blondie, 1/5/21

I regret to inform you that, mere days into 2021, I am back on my bullshit, and I think readers of this blog know me well enough to know that “figuring out how characters in legacy comics occupy and move through physical space” makes up a surprisingly large portion of my bullshit. Anyway, does Mr. Dithers not actually have his own office with a door? Does he just have a desk around … a corner from Dagwood’s workspace, presumably so he doesn’t have took at his worst employee’s dumb face but can hear him snoring and swoop into to pile on the abuse, if necessary? Or, other possibility: does he sometimes just spin around on his chair and scoot around the bullpen on it, as he appears to be doing here, dropping sick burns on his workforce while they’re within earshot before retreating back to the dignified, enclosed office area reserved for his use only?

The Phantom, 1/5/21

Hey, remember that time a lady cop and a waitress quit their dead-end (?) jobs to join the Jungle Patrol, Bangalla’s elite paramilitary force that takes orders from its “Unknown Commander,” the Phantom? This display of “girl power” was a bit undercut by the fact that every subsequent appearance of these two involved them projecting their fantasies on the Unknown Commander and getting extremely horny for him. Anyway, today they’re learning what happens when you commit yourself body and soul to the regime of an unaccountable superhero, which is that sometimes you have to go clean up the mess he left behind, possibly by murdering some dudes so he doesn’t have to.

Mary Worth, 1/5/21

Mary Worth knows that some of its readers might have found the previous storyline, which explicitly depicted the use of illegal narcotics, a little too thrilling, and so, in order to maintain everyone’s equilibrium, the first storyline in the new year will involve a senior gentleman asking a somewhat taller senior lady on a date to the mall (with like a week’s worth of cushion so we all have time to prepare ourselves, emotionally, to read about the date).

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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.