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Blondie, 12/10/19

There’s a fleeting, poignant little moment embedded in an already emotionally fraught scene in It’s A Wonderful Life that I think about a lot. After George has gone to Martini’s and ends up coming to blows with Mr. Welch, the husband of the teacher George has just berated for no reason over the phone, Martini throws Welch out of the bar and in the process declares that George is “his best friend,” which, c’mon, we all know that George thinks of Martini as nothing more than one of the Savings and Loan’s more colorful and ethnic shareholders and has literally never done anything social with him outside of the bar. Anyway, I’d like to imagine that It’s A Wonderful Lasagna is a remake where George and Martini really are best friends, and at the end of the movie the Baileys head down to Bailey Park to enjoy a delicious homemade lasagna that Mrs. Martini has prepared. Would that be great? Martini probably would think so, though George would no doubt prefer to stay on the nice side of town and eat unseasoned roast chicken or whatever the solid citizens of Bedford Falls think of as haute cuisine.

Mark Trail, 12/10/19

Do yetis whistle? Is whistling part of yeti lore? Does anyone remember that this storyline is supposed to be about yetis? I’VE PUT UP WITH A LOT OF BULLSHIT HERE AND I WANT TO SEE A DAMN YETI

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Blondie, 11/24/19

I don’t know why, but it bothers me so much that Dagwood refers to “giblet pawns” but the pieces in question very obviously do not look like organ meats at all! They just look like regular turkeys! Almost as if this strip, like most legacy comic strips, isn’t actually the creation of a single credited artist, but is rather put together assembly-line-style by hired hands, and one person wrote the joke and then the artist got the script and was like “no way in hell I’m going to draw weird turkey liver things, fuck that noise, I am not paid anywhere near enough.” I do appreciate that the drumstick-king isn’t just a drumstick, but actually a drumstick with a turkey face on it, which is some real body horror business, and also it’s wearing a crown and a wig. Just in case you thought the artist was a slacker. They’re clearly not. But giblet pawns were just a bridge too far.

Shoe, 11/24/19

hey

hey guys

hey you know what

y’all are birds

and birds

don’t give birth to live young

they

lay

eggs

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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.