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Beetle Bailey, 10/13/18

Beetle Bailey’s Rocky, created in order to cash in on the “rock ‘n’ roll” music the kids loved so much in the ’50s, has over the years taken on a number of conflicting attributes that might be vaguely lumped together as “anti-establishment”: he’s been an anti-war protestor, a nihilist, a mutineer and assassin, a violent street tough, and an abstract impressionist, so sure, let’s make him a muckraking journalist as well, for some reason! Anyway, panel two is a good image for those of you who can only get off when thinking about an old man ashamed of his own incontinence, I guess.

Hagar the Horrible, 10/13/18

Long-distance Viking trade networks did result in cultural contacts between medieval Arabs and Scandinavians, so it’s plausible that a djinni could find itself in the The Horrible’s Norwegian shack. And djinn are canonically charismatic, so it makes sense that Helga would want to have sex with this Middle Eastern spirit being and condemn her ungrateful husband to an eternity trapped in a lamp. This all checks out!

Blondie and Marvin, 10/13/18

Say, are you a comfortable middle-aged suburbanite syndicated cartoonist looking for a venue where you can work out your irritation with, say, those showboating NBA players, or the poor? Well, good news!

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Mary Worth, 10/11/18

So it looks like Mary’s going to go with the “Tee hee, I need a big strong man to make sure I’m not ripped off by those ruffians down at the auto repair shop” gambit to try to lure Saul out of his Sadness Condo. Charmingly patriarchal as I find Mr. Wynter’s snarled “What happened to your boyfriend?”, we all know what happened to Mary’s boyfriend: (a) this is all a ploy so he’s not even involved, (b) he has an actual job, unlike these two retiree layabouts, and (c) he’s extremely nervous and would probably react to any hard sell from the mechanics by saying “He’s right, Mary! A car without a thorough undercoating is unsafe!”

Crankshaft, 10/11/18

There’s this whole depressing long-simmering storyline that Crankshaft has revisited over the years about how Lilian thwarted her sister Lucy’s love life when they were young out of jealousy, which I can never keep the details straight because I find it tedious, and also I think Lucy died within the last ten years of real-life time or so in some tragic way … was it Alzheimer’s? I’m gonna say Alzheimer’s. Anyway, the fella who was the object of both sisters’ desire in their youth is this behattèd gentl here, who’s come to this class reunion to offer absolution, I guess, and also offer career advise: Lilian should write a book about her tragically dead sister! Sure, she’s written exactly one book, a cozy murder mystery, and cozy murder mysteries are a solidly commercial genre that you can be real successful in if you find your niche, and she landed her agent on the strength of that manuscript, but why not suddenly shift gears and write a memoir? Remember, this is the Funkyverse, where the only valid literary form is the Tragic Memoir About A Loved One Who Died.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/11/18

Speaking of the Funkyverse, Funky had planned to “run through the tape here at Montoni’s,” which I take to mean that he intended to keep working there until he died, presumably of a rage-stroke while he screamed at some tomato sauce supplier over the phone, but now he’s going to abruptly hand the job over to his nephew and peace out. Does he have any retirement savings to fall back on, or has he finally realized that dying in poverty is preferable to smelling burnt pepperoni and sadness every day for the rest of his life?

Crock, 10/11/18

This comic doesn’t make any sense because it’s established Crock canon that Maggot and Grossie live in a tent. I hate that I know this.

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Crankshaft, 10/1/18

So I guess this lady is in fact one of Crankshaft’s classmates — one of, as this tiny set of plates indicates, a fast dwindling number. I have literally no handle on any of the interpersonal dynamics going on here. Why is Crankshaft so resistent to acknowledging that he and Mary are a romantic item? Why is Mary so eager for people to know that she’s linked herself, sexually and presumably emotionally, to Ed Crankshaft, one of the most hateful men alive? Why is Darla Gillespie smiling at this interaction? Surely you don’t expect me to believe that she feels anything positive about Crankshaft or his romantic situation.

Six Chix, 10/1/18

Shout out, I guess, to Six Chix not having the alien actually saying this to someone wearing lederhosen, which is what I’d expect for a joke like this but it wouldn’t make any sense, because, why would he need to be taken to it? It’s right there! Much less of a shoutout to Six Chix for not knowing what other kinds of southern German garb to use, though. Dirndls! Dirndls are what you’re looking for. Maybe you think you’ve drawn a dirndl here, but trust me, you very much have not.

Dick Tracy, 10/1/18

There’s a whole “Ugly Crystal is meeting her biological dad” plot in Dick Tracy storyline going on right now that I extremely don’t care about, but I find it very, very funny that (a) for some reason personal medical information is being delivered to the police station instead of these people’s homes and (b) Dick seems to have casually opened one of the envelopes. Don’t like it, kid? Whaddya gonna do, call the cops?