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Crankshaft, 12/14/22

I love the idea of this TV station boss threatening to make his staff pick up dog shit if they annoy him. There are just lots of levels to it. First of all, there’s the fact that they have a regular event where a bunch of dogs shit all over the studio, and they haven’t really figured out how to deal with that yet. Also, if nobody makes this pun, I guess the dog turds are just going to stay all over the studio? To prove a point? “At least nobody made a stupid pun,” the boss says, as everyone gingerly walks around all the poop that’s smeared everywhere. Anyway, I certainly hope that the station janitor is within earshot, so that he knows that his job is a punishment, actually.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/14/22

I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the gag writers for Barney Google and Snuffy Smith understand what “feudin’” entails in a culture where clan loyalties are paramount and the government is unable to claim a monopoly on legitimate violence. It does not involve playing wacky pranks on one another, I assure you! It involves Barlow trying to murder Uriah, with a gun.

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Judge Parker, 12/8/22

When I was a teen, there was a syndicated War of the Worlds show that was a sequel to the 1950s movie version, but set in the present-day (i.e., the late ’80s) when the aliens from the movie — who were not dead after all, just in suspended animation and kept in secret labs around the world — started waking up and making a comeback. I pretty instantly fell in love with this show, and so was somewhat discomfited when the second season started and abruptly the time period was shifted to a dystopian, riot-scarred “near future” where society had begun to unravel, and several beloved (by me) characters were killed off almost right away and new boring ones introduced. This was before obsessive online fandom was a thing, so there was no real way for 14-year-old me to know that a new showrunner had been brought in to change things up, but shoutout to the War of the Worlds (1988 TV series) superfan who put all the drama on the Wikipedia article.

My point is that Cavelton, the Connecticut-ish Judge Parker setting, has always been pretty bucolic and suburban, but suddenly we’re expected to believe that since 2018 it’s been in the grips of “the C18,” a deadly drug gang. Well, I’m not 14 anymore and I’m not going to just accept this. I’m calling it now: these C18 guys are just as boring as everyone else in this drippy town, as evidenced by the fact that their attempt to come up with a cool name like “MS-13” produced extremely dopey results.

Crankshaft, 12/8/22

You’re talking to a janitor from the future about how the book you’re about to write will create a utopia. Meanwhile, or maybe ten years ago, who can say, I’m passed out drunk in a Santa costume in the middle of the day. We are not the same.

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Beetle Bailey, 11/29/22

Beetle Bailey has recently established that, in addition to being extremely stupid, Zero is also an extremely accurate rifleman. But how can the U.S. military harden this peaceful simpleton’s heart so that he can use his skills to kill America’s adversaries? Well, it turns out that Sgt. Snorkel is actually pretty good at the “teach your soldiers to dehumanize the enemy” part of the job.

Crankshaft, 11/29/22

One of my least favorite Crankshaft tropes is when the gang treats Lena, a coworker who is always depicted as nothing but delightful as a person, with wholly undeserved contempt, especially when it comes to her cooking and/or making coffee. Like, fine, she’s probably bad at it or whatever, but their reactions are always way over the top in a way that I guess is supposed to be “exaggerated for comic effect” but always comes across as mean-spirited and unpleasant. Today’s strip, in which Ed declares that Lena’s cookies actively interfere with the Christ child’s mission to redeem mankind from sin, is a good example.

Dick Tracy, 11/29/22

Say, remember back in 2017, a more innocent time, when we all learned that Dick Tracy knows what cosplay is? Well, this is the year when we learn that Dick Tracy knows what furries are. Maybe he’s going to shoot one, or shoot somebody who’s robbing one, who knows!