Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 5/8/26

I honestly am not sure if the joke here is simply “Lt. Fuzz is humiliated because Gen. Halftrack takes an enlisted soldier’s advice instead of his” (I assume she’s enlisted because she wears the same uniform as Beetle — I’m not sure how that relates to actual U.S. Army uniforms but I’m confident Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC isn’t either) or if there’s another possibility lurking, which is that the General is being agreeable with this soldier because she’s a pretty lady. That’s in character, but it requires us to interpret some ambiguous visual cues — are Halftrack’s eyes particularly bugged out in panel one or am I imagining it? is “blonde” a guaranteed marker of attractiveness in the Baileyverse? — and, maybe it’s mean to say this, but I personally think that it would all be easier to parse if the art in this strip were, you know, good.

Crankshaft, 5/8/26

Ed Crankshaft is old, and someday soon he’s gonna die, and maybe that’ll start with him just being overcome with all-pervasive tiredness as his body shuts down. Now, that’s not happening today, I’m pretty sure, but I am heartened to think that he’ll definitely be making some incomprehensible wordplay while it happens.

Post Content

Dick Tracy, 5/3/26

There’s no such thing as the “J. Duveen Art Gallery” (though Joseph Duveen was a famous early 20th century art dealer), but the fictional building so named in this strip appears to be a Frank Gehry design. I’d like to believe that in the Dick Tracy universe, Gehry worked extensively in Neo-Chicago, taking inspiration from the dramatic and abstract skull shapes of the various members of Tracy’s rogues gallery.

Mary Worth, 5/3/26

Not a lot of new stuff in this Sunday recap of the recap, but I do like how languorous Mary and Toby look in that hot tub. Mary is so relaxed she can’t even bring herself to lift her hands out of the water to make air quotes around “relationship” and “girlfriend”! Anyway, I admit this plot has been fun but I’m hoping that the Sunday quote from martial arts master Jet Li presages an upcoming storyline that’s a bit more dynamic.

Crankshaft, 5/3/26

Crankshaft did a strip about hot flashes, and it didn’t make a pun or wordplay of any kind about them, and you can tell from Ed’s picture here that he’s absolutely furious about it. “If I had been there, it wouldn’t have went down like it did,” he’s thinking. “I would’ve malaproped ‘menopause’ so intensely that people would be talking about it for years.”

Post Content

Mary Worth, 4/29/26

I was briefly excited that this Mary Worth storyline was going to end with Mary and Toby enjoying a self-congratulatory spa trip rather than Mary and Dr. Jeff enjoying a self-congratulatory dinner date and boat ride, but then I realized that probably we’re going to get a self-congratulatory spa trip followed by a self-congratulatory dinner date and boat ride during which Mary relays to Jeff an excruciatingly detailed recap of both the storyline that’s just wrapped up and the spa trip.

Dick Tracy, 4/29/26

Look, I’m open minded, I cheerfully accepted “Dick Tracy is canonically aware of the existence of furries,” but, hmm, “Mumbles, the iconic Dick Tracy villain who was first introduced in 1947 and was played by Dustin Hoffman in the 1990 Warren Beatty Dick Tracy movie, is canonically a furry, and told Dick this himself,” boy, I dunno. Anyway, the MCU is on the tail (haha, get it) of Mumbles and his pals after their dramatic prison breakout, so I guess we’re going to see the cops staking out [extremely heavy sigh] fursuit shops or something.

Hi and Lois, 4/29/26

I’m really enjoying Lois’s facial expression in the second panel here. “Ah shit ah fuck the 22-year-old realtor influencer on TikTok who won’t shut up about ‘boosting revenues with concierge services’ did not say anything about this,” she appears to be thinking.

The Phantom, 4/29/26

I’m also really enjoying the facial expressions on long-time Phantom antagonist Eric “The Infamous Nomad” Sahara and his Gitmo guard as they give Ignis Vindicta a once over. “Is this an … actual alien guy, or some dude in a mask from Spirit Halloween, or what?” they’re both trying to figure out, with varying degrees of confusion and contempt.

Crankshaft, 4/29/26

I’m really not enjoying the facial expression on this lady in panel two, but I accept that, for denizens of the Funkyverse, “I’ve awkwardly set up a truly terrible bit of wordplay and now I’m about to unleash it” is an all-too-common scenario, and they need a visual signal to let people know that it’s about to happen.