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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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Dick Tracy, 11/21/19

Splitface is back, everybody! Remember Splitface, the beloved (?) villain from the storyline earlier this year? Splitface, who used to be Haf and Haf, not the other guy with the same name? Anyway, Splitface is being awfully hard on Clybourne, who, despite not having much experience working with explosives, has nevertheless managed to correctly identify this as a multi-car bomb.

Crankshaft, 11/21/19

I’m … assuming this is setting up a whole week of wacky Crankshaft Thanksigivingisms but … guys, what if they just forgot that Thanksgiving was really late into November this year, and thought November 21st was Thanksgiving when they wrote this, and this is supposed to be the Thanksgiving strip! Just imagine the number of people who had a chance to say “Hey, is this supposed to run next week?” but didn’t, because, Crankshaft, man, and who cares, actually.

Mary Worth, 11/21/19

This condo complex is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The pedestrian walkways and designated parking areas are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their drunkenness and boxing documentaries will foam up about their waists, and all the advice columnists and busybodies will look up and shout “Do you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain?”

…and I’ll look down, and whisper “no.”

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Pluggers, 10/26/19

They say the plugger and the hipster are mortal enemies, but here is evidence that they are both part of the same majestic web of life: assuming it wasn’t too stained or malodorous, I would absolutely, 100% buy an “I survived Y2K” t-shirt from a vintage clothing store, probably for more than this dog-man paid for it. Plugger hoarding tendencies ensure that these bits of pop culture flotsam don’t reenter the marketplace until enough time has passed to ensure that their cultural signifiers have gone from just out of date to ironically funny. Truly, nature is wonderful.

Crankshaft, 10/26/19

I’m not sure what kind of diktat came down from King Features Central Command about making Crankshaft cute ‘n’ cuddly to set up the line of Crankshaft The Friendly Old Man Christmas ornaments and cocoa mugs they’re cooking up, but it’s gonna take more than him gazing contentedly at some marshmallows to make up for literally 32 years of a strip where the central joke, hammered home over and over again, was “good lord, Ed Crankshaft is a tremendous asshole.”