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Six Chix, 12/16/20

It was just back in March of this year that there was a Rhymes With Orange strip about dogs pissing on sentient snowmen for which the syndicate colorist bravely held the line and refused to use yellow to highlight the clearly drawn section where the snowman got pissed on. But the last nine months have frankly felt like about a million years, and so now, in December, the colorists have clearly just given up. You wanna do a comic where a snowman tries to bargain with a dog to stop the pissing? Sure, whatever. Let’s make the piss the same color as the sunset, too, just really drive home the melange of beauty and disgust that we’re aiming for. It’s been a year, man, there’s no point in being precious about, well, anything. Also, fun fact, I at first misremembered the Rhymes With Orange strip linked above as a Six Chix strip, so I spent a lot of trime trying to find it in my Six Chix archives using keywords like “urine” and “piss” and “pee” and honestly I got a lot of results, so clearly I am, and always have been, Part Of The Problem.

Beetle Bailey, 12/16/20

No one would ever mistake Lt. Fuzz for a Jacobin; his only ideological orientation is towards his own advancement. But clearly he’s not moving up the ladder in the army’s current structure, so maybe he thinks that so long as he backs the guillotining of a few aristocrats he’ll have better luck with the French Revolutionary practice of officers being elected by their soldiers (he won’t).

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/16/20

CALLING IT NOW: Buck has come down with just a touch of the ol’ diabeetus! In normal times, newspaper readers can handle exciting medical things happening to Buck, like him getting shot in the head with a nail gun. But in the midst of a global pandemic, and especially with Wilford Brimley’s tragic passing this year, we need the comfort of a diabeetus storyline, to anchor us emotionally.

Dennis the Menace, 12/16/20

“My goodness and badness exist in superposition in the same physical space, in defiance of the laws of physics! My mother cringes away from me whenever I approach in horror at the ontological whirlpool of virtue and vice that I have become!”

Hi and Lois, 12/16/20

Is someone laughing? Fooling around? Having fun? Well they won’t anymore, not after Lois gets to the bottom of this!

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Gasoline Alley, 11/28/20

The current Gasoline Alley storyline is too boring and confusing for me to get into here, and in that sense it is quite frankly like most Gasoline Alley storylines. But I do want to point out that Gasoline Alley is one of those strips where the characters age over the years, which makes them not only more and more wrinkled but also results in them learning and growing as human beings. Why, it was a mere 13 years ago that Slim reacted to the presence of basketball-playing youths in his neighborhood by attempting to kill them by hiring a guy to drop a meteorite on them from a helicopter. But now it’s the year 2020, and Slim has learned that murder is one of those things that might’ve been OK in its historic context but is no longer “woke.”

Dennis the Menace, 11/28/20

Henry’s facial expression is kind of puzzling but it honestly looks like he’s trying to suppress laughter? “What a little idiot,” he’s thinking. “She’s not even in the top decile globally.”

Beetle Bailey, 11/28/20

How are things going over at Beetle Bailey? Well, the Camp Swampy boys are rounding up terrified civilians at gunpoint so … not great, I guess!

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Blondie, 11/16/20

I strongly agree with the consensus here: this is a disturbing daydream! I feel like I need to know more details in order to really gauge the contours of how disturbing it is, though. The “no doors” thing is the most disturbing part by far, and is the key to whole scenario. Like, did they just wake up there together with no way out, slowly coming to terms with the fact that they’re trapped with each other in some Sartre-esque office hell? Or were they dropped down into a roofless office from above, and expected to fight each other to the death for the amusement of a hooting crowd of spectators?

Slylock Fox, 11/16/20

The first time I commented on this strip, I had a lot of thoughts about how Max could maximize his fashion potential at this seaside wedding blowout. But this time around, all I could think was: Max, are you seriously considering upstaging the bride by wearing white? How dare you!

Dennis the Menace, 11/16/20

The most menacing thing here is how grateful the piggy bank looks for Dennis’s promise to never trade him in for a wallet (Dennis is definitely going to trade him in for a wallet).

Family Circus, 11/16/20

I’ve never fully understood what the deal is supposed to be with Jeffy, an actual toddler, wearing cuffed jeans and penny loafers around the house at all times, but I will say that the look is not improved by shirtlessness.

Dick Tracy, 11/16/20

Oh, by the way, Neo-Chicago is blanketed by drones allowing omnipresent, crystal-clear police surveillance of everyone at all times, just in case you were wondering!