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Dick Tracy, 9/12/23

Sprocket Nitrate has managed to extract herself from the crumbling criminal enterprise in which she was entangled and has laid her hands on a fake passport and, you know what, good for her! Now she faces her greatest challenge yet: will she be able to bring herself to put on shoes as she flees the country? Criminal syndicates tend to have fairly relaxed workplace dress codes, but in my experience you really do need to wear shoes to board an international flight.

Mary Worth, 9/12/23

Ha ha, bet you thought that Saul and Eve getting married and paying their respects to Mary last week would signal that this week, finally, we would finally embark on a new adventure. Turns out nope! Turns out we’re stuck here forever. Truly wild that this storyline began with a lurid dogfighting plot and is going to end with an old man trying to figure out how much of his stuff he should donate to the Goodwill.

Pardon My Planet, 9/12/23

What with the combination of the classic winged-angels-standing-on-clouds depiction of heaven, reincarnation, “soul companion,” and the idea that the spirit might remain tied to the body even after death, I’m going to say something I never thought I’d say: there’s way too much going on theologically in today’s Pardon My Planet.

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Beetle Bailey, 9/5/23

A lot of Beetle Bailey’s M.O. boils down to “We thought of a joke, which of our long-ish list of one-note characters that we’ve accrued over the years can we assign it to?” Reading panel one, I though Rocky, as the camp’s resident rock-and-roll loving bad boy, was a bad choice for this, but once I realized it was about one of the soldiers being rejected by his family and forced to make a home in a cruel institution that doesn’t want him either, I changed my mind, this is a good one.

Dick Tracy, 9/5/23

Look, this may be a “Minit Mystery,” but do we have time to spend a whole strip on some Grade A Wholly Innocent [change this later if necessary –Eds] Beefcake? Yes, yes we do.

Dustin, 9/5/23

“Ha ha, get it? Wait, no, actually, that metaphor doesn’t really make sense. Sorry, I’m still workshopping this bit. Anyway, long story short, you’re dying.”

Judge Parker, 9/5/23

I’m sorry, Gloria, are you keeping meticulous accounting records of a criminal fucking conspiracy?

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Hi and Lois, 8/29/23

Look, I’m just a simple city boy who’s always had his trash collected by a municipal service department, and I don’t understand the wily ways of suburbia with its advanced public-private partnerships and such. That’s why the relationship between Hi and his garbagemen has always puzzled me, as it’s often implied that he’s paying them directly in some way? I always assumed they were contracted by his HOA or something, but now that I find out that it’s actually some kind of anarcho-capitalist situation where different suppliers compete for dominance both by offering superior service for better prices and by using violence to intimidate or eliminate their competitors, I have to admit that I’m a lot more interested.

Blondie, 8/29/23

If you’ve read this blog long enough, you know that inside me are two wolves: one that gripes “Ugh, this long-running legacy comic has been beating the same joke into the ground for decades” and the other that gripes “Wait, this is out of character! Why isn’t this long-running legacy comic strip character using one of the beloved jokes he’s been doing for decades?” Anyway, today the second wolf has triumphed, and I have to say I’m disappointed that the punchline here is “Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if men liked reality TV?” rather than the reveal being that Dagwood was watching America’s Next Top Sandwich or The Real Sandwiches Of Beverly Hills or Love Is Blind And Also They Eat Sandwiches or something.

Dennis the Menace, 8/29/23

Alice shaming her son for not having any friends to play with? A rare menace reversal here.

Dick Tracy, 8/29/23

“A real piece of shit. We all wanted him dead and whoever did this to him should get a medal. Frankly I’m pretty furious the coroner called you down here. Nobody in this locker room is going to testify at trial.”