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Judge Parker, 3/28/23

Look, we’ve had a lot of dragged-out and sometimes baffling emotional processing between these two over the past few years, and I for one am not ready for them to sheepishly admit that they probably should never have broken up in the first place. I am grudgingly prepared to allow for an eventual reconciliation so long as Abbey’s “find[ing] out what [she] want[s]” involves a voyage of sexual exploration across the great state of whatever state Cavelton is in that lasts at least through the summer.

Daddy Daze, 3/28/23

I was about to say that the Daddy Daze baby has finally figured out the central joke of the Daddy Daze comic strip, which is that the Daddy Daze daddy “repeats” everything the Daddy Daze baby “says” so that we at home can understand it, but of course the baby hasn’t figured anything out at all; he’s an infant and all his various “ba”s really are just pre-verbal babbling. No, what actually happened is that the Daddy Daze daddy has decided to get increasingly meta with his bit, which really is a product of his desperately lonely and increasingly unhinged mind. The baby can’t understand you, man! And you can’t understand him either! You’re talking to nobody!

Beetle Bailey, 3/28/23

Beetle Bailey has been slowly adding more rounded characterization to Zero of all people over the past few years: we’ve learned that in addition to being very stupid, he’s a farm boy and also a terrifyingly accurate killer. He’s also a teetotaler, I guess? Adding this information to the file [I open an enormous file cabinet next to my desk and pull out a folder labeled BEETLE BAILEY CHARACTERS M-Z]

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Daddy Daze, 3/20/23

OK, I know we’re all in agreement that the Daddy Daze daddy is deep in the throes of some kind of kind of seriously delusional state, but this is truly one of the most wack Daddy Dazes yet. The Daddy Daze daddy … likes all teams, equally? Like, from all sports? And thinks rooting for one in particular is a Sophie’s Choice situation? When it’s actually 100% how sports fandom works, you just pick one for more or less arbitrary reasons involving where you live or what players you liked when you’re between the ages of 8 and 12 or who your friends root for? And also he’s not in the position of picking a favorite child, so the metaphor doesn’t make any sense, which he admits two panels later???? It’s a good thing the Daddy Daze baby is too young to actually understand speech so his tiny mind won’t be permanently warped by all this.

Family Circus, 3/20/23

I do love that in Billy’s vision, his father is being angrily berated by the family doctor. I’m not sure if this is meant to indicate that he has an overly literally idea of how our for-profit health care system works, or if this is a sad reflection of how he’s treated when he inconveniences his parents by becoming ill.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/12/23

You guys know I dearly miss the days when Sarah was a weird precocious adult-child, back before before she got hit by a car and it reset her brain back to normalcy. I don’t know if we’re every going to see a return to form on this, but I feel like her walking in and angrily saying the first paragraph of the “Valentine’s Day” Wikipedia article at her brothers is a good start.

Hi and Lois, 2/12/23

Today’s throwaway panel really changes the whole tone of the strip, in my opinion. Sure, Lois and the kid are having some good clean fun in the kitchen, but what of Hi? He thought today was going to be for bonding with his family while watching the big game, but instead he’s all by himself while they deliberately ignore him.

Daddy Daze, 2/12/23

We all, of course, have been worrying about the Daddy Daze daddy’s mental and emotional health for some time, but I think today is the first day that we learn that, in a probably related development, he’s not doing great financially either.