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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!

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/23/22

Oh my God, Mr. Davidson the janitor is some kind of near-immortal being, charged with subtly guiding the world under his care, just like the characters in the MCU movie Eternals (maybe? like all normal people, I did not see that movie or read the comics it was based on). Anyway, it turns out that despite his apparent old age, in the context of his own kind he’s just a beginner, which explains why the Funkyverse is so deeply fucked up.

Dick Tracy, 11/23/22

I guess the glory days of Dick Tracy really are behind us: instead of having his skull exploded by powerful magnets, Steelface just got mildly burned and then left the hospital in a huff over the substandard medical care they provided, and instead of being shot in the back for “resisting arrest” by Dick and his goons, he’s just going to learn through irony that stealing cars isn’t very nice, and so he’ll wind his stolen car ring up post-haste and move on to more socially productive pursuits.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/23/22

Oh wow, look at how mad Truck is! He’s beginning to suspect that Mud Mountain’s whole binge eating/onstage pants-shitting bit was just a ruse that successfully promoted him from opening act to headliner! This is why you never found stardom, Truck: you have to be willing to endure any humiliation, public or private, if it advances your career. You never had what it takes and you never will.

Pluggers, 11/23/22

A fun fact is that on more than one occasion I’ve started to take a shower and realized I still had my hearing aids on, which is a much more terrifying situation vis-a-vis replacement costs than the one in which this plugger finds himself. But it turns out they’re pretty hardy gadgets and they came through OK! Anyway, I have out-pluggered a Pluggers and now I need to go take a long shower (without my glasses or hearing aids on) to cry.

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Dick Tracy, 11/17/22

Look, I know, we’re never getting back to the glory days of “guy in gimp suit gets eaten alive by rats,” but you have to admit that we’re coming pretty close with a Dick Tracy villain named “Steelface,” whose whole thing is that he has a steel plate in his face that’s magnetic, and you’d think that he’d be know about situations where such an arrangment would be dangerous, like, say, getting into an MRI machine, and also you’d think the medical techs would ask questions like, “Say, you don’t have a steel plate under that bandage, do you?”, but it turns out nope on both counts and now he’s going to get his skull ripped apart by the MRI machine’s powerful magnets. He only ended up at this hospital because he hit his head fleeing from a police raid on his stolen car operation, so we can basically credit this grisly death to the cops, or at least that’s what they’ll be telling themselves while they stand around watching the poor hospital night shift guy scraping what’s left of Steelface’s face off the inside of the MRI machine with a putty knife.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/17/22

If you were really at a concert like this and a performer made this kind of announcement, everyone in the audience would chuckle knowingly and understand that “ice cream” and “tummyache” were code for “drugs and/or alcohol” and “unconscious.” Sadly, this is Rex Morgan, M.D., where literally everything is exactly as it seems on the surface, all the time.

Hi and Lois, 11/17/22

Sure, Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC has somehow managed to survive and even thrive in a declining newspaper industry as their readership ages, but I’m hoping that this comic means they’re about to go all-in on crypto at the worst possible time.

Crankshaft, 11/17/22

Look, not every Crankshaft has to be a big “event,” you know? Sometimes it can be something quiet and delightful, like Crankshaft falling face-first up a flight of stairs.