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Beetle Bailey, 11/23/19

Real Beetle Bailey-heads know that General Halftrack has a driver, and his name is Julius, although I don’t think he’s appeared in the strip in a while; the only place I can find him in my archives is here, in what appears to be a gay panic dream sequence from 2004. A mere gap of 15 years is of course nothing to the deep lore of Beetle Bailey continuity, though I suppose it’s possible that he was reassigned to a more important job as part of Pentagon budget cuts; still, I assume that mostly this joke is about how the folks Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC finally heard about Uber and could’t wait to use it as a punchline.

Blondie, 11/23/19

Speaking of hilarious tech punchlines: you guys heard about this bitcoin thing? It’s electronic moola! You could buy [tries desperately to think of a cool high-tech thing a kid would like] a … drone? … with bitcoins, that’s for sure! Helpful tip: if your joke hinges on something being a high-tech novelty, but that thing was already a punchline in Snuffy Smith four years ago, it is no longer particularly novel.

Crankshaft, 11/23/19

Here it is, Thanksgiving weekend, and the boys are “enjoying” some good old-fashioned football! Remember when Crazy Harry laid out the rules of happiness in the Funkyverse, which are that you can’t ever feel happy because if you do the universe will make you regret it? I thought about that watching Jeff clinging anxiously to that unopened bag of chips there. A normal person would open the chips and eat them to enjoy time with their family. But that sounds like fun, and fun is the one thing none of these sad sacks is allowed to have.

Mary Worth, 11/23/19

Ha ha, how cool and fun would it be if your friend set you up with someone, and then that person got really drunk before a date and made just a complete theatrical ass of himself, and when you told your friend about it, they were just like “Oh, wow, yeah, that definitely sounds in character for him, this person I suggested you become romantically involved with!” Would you stay friends with this person? Would you ever speak to them again?

Mark Trail, 11/23/19

BAD NEWS: Mark Trail and company have still not encountered even a single yeti.

GOOD NEWS: Mark Trail and company are fleeing from a landslide while wearing … snuggies? Let’s say snuggies. More on this development as events warrant.

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Judge Parker, 11/20/19

Hey guys, remember Honey Ballinger? Remember how Sophie coveted her boyfriend Derek and then plotted to steal away her boyfriend? Remember how Sophie later got mad that Honey was going steal away Sophie’s boyfriend, Derek? And then, uh, there was the whole confusing car crash/kidnapping plot where Honey got away but Sophie was kidnapped, for a while? Remember how Sam and Sophie’s dad teamed up to track down the kidnapper, super-incompetently? Well, Judge Parker remembers, and is here to remind you that material consequences still remain things suffered by non-Parker-Spencer-Drivers, as Sam, an insanely wealthy man who has apparently decided to restart his law practice on a whim and was shopping around for pricey office real estate last week while his erstwhile partner in vigilantism cashes unemployment checks somewhere, can attest.

Blondie, 11/20/19

I have to admit that I don’t actually get the joke here or the transition between the two panels, unless Lou is saying that so-called “secret menus” (In-N-Out Burger’s is probably the most famous) are essentially marketing devices designed to build word-of-mouth buzz and drive in more customers, whereas Lou’s Diner, quite obviously, has a number of operational problems and can barely handle the customers it has.

Mary Worth, 11/20/19

I swear to God that when I wrote the title for yesterday’s post I had no idea what joys today’s Mary Worth would bring. Now, you might find Wilbur’s song choice wildly inappropriate, as the complex narrative of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” — in which the narrator seeks to cheat on his “lady” by answering a personal ad, only to discover that the ad was placed by her, looking to cheat on him — doesn’t really map onto his and Estelle’s relationship at all. But beyond the specific details of the story, the song’s core message — that the relationship you’re in now might seem unpleasant, like a literal prison, but honestly, if you go looking for something better you won’t find it, so you might as well stick with it — is probably the most convincing argument he could make in his favor at this point. Anyway, I stand by what I said yesterday: Estelle should definitely, definitely call the cops.

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Blondie, 11/4/19

I was going to say that Dagwood, who is apparently willing to stick his tongue into some sort of measuring/scanning apparatus and have the details of his mouth biology stored indefinitely in the cloud in order to prove his “loyalty” to a restaurant and get few percent knocked off his bill, represents the ultimate version of the modern human, willing to trade away his privacy for pennies. But then it occurred to me that restaurants could just do this with facial recognition, which makes me assume that this is actually just some kind of sick fetish idea on Dagwood’s part.

Mary Worth, 11/4/19

I fully expect that I’m going to be bringing you my close analysis of Wilbur’s Drunken Double Date multiple times this week. Today, as we learn that Zak does not subscribe to the cult of the grind prevalent among so many tech founders and game industry execs, we should pause and appreciate Wilbur’s facial expression in panel two, which is a pretty good illustration of a very, very drunk guy trying and almost succeeding in holding it together.

Dustin, 11/4/19

One of the core bits of Dustin lore that I already hate myself for knowing is that Dustin is a temp who gets assigned to generic white-collar office jobs from which he almost immediately gets fired because he sucks at them, but somehow his temp agency keeps finding him more work. Anyway, it’s definitely out of character for him to suddenly be given a job in the skilled trades, and I’d like to believe that it represents some narrative shift in the strip, but I’m assuming the cartoonist saw the phrase “Quick Lube” and thought, “Ha ha, you know who wouldn’t be quick at lubing things? That incompetent millennial Dustin!” We should probably be glad the strip ended up like this and not about sex stuff.

The Lockhorns, 11/4/19

My favorite thing about this strip is that Leroy has turned away from his wife and is heading into the bar while she narrates her disdain for him to some passerby. “Wife making mouth noises, but no time to process them,” he thinks. “Daylight waning, along with it opportunities for day drinking.”