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Panels from Hagar the Horrible, 11/17/24

“OK, we want people to know she’s a prostitute, so we’ll give her torn short shorts and fishnet stockings … but how will we let people know she’s a French prostitute? Can we do something with her upper half, maybe?” This sounds like criticism but it’s not. Perfect visual storytelling, informative and funny, keep it up Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC.

Dustin, 11/17/24

What really makes this strip for me is not that Dustin’s dad has to cut this evening short to go to bed so he can get up and go to work — we’ve all been there, “there” being a hell-world where are forced to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow and cannot simply be indolent all day if we so choose — but the way he does it. “Well, enough of this,” he announces to his aged father, who is unwell (see final panel “punchline”) and may not be around much longer. “I’ve done the math on whether my optimal choice is to hang out with you or slip into unconsciousness, and my conclusion is: smell ya later, old man.”

Dennis the Menace, 11/17/24

Wow, so the entire run of Dennis the Menace has been one of those ironic things where it turns out it’s a story written by one of the characters! Who knew Mr. Wilson had such artistic talents. Anyway, looks like today’s the day we wrap the whole thing up. RIP Dennis the Menace, 1951-2024, you taught me it was OK to be weird.

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Dustin, 11/15/24

Yes, sir, Dustin sure is a strip where one of the main characters is a lawyer! Ha ha, that is undeniable. And “class action”? You’d better believe that’s something a lawyer would say. Does that make this strip funny? Well. That’s neither here nor there. I think we can say all the elements are there, though! Ha ha!

Hagar the Horrible, 11/15/24

The thing about Hagar is that he’s a literal savage, a vicious pirate and murderer. Everyone is terrified of him! He’s a violent man who feels no remorse!

Pluggers, 11/15/24

Pluggers are covered with bruises and various injuries. It’s actually really disheartening. And they’re old and their health isn’t great, so they don’t heal as quickly as they used to.

Shoe, 11/15/24

Wait, do the Shoe bird-people do meetings by Zoom? That implies a global pandemic in their recent past … but what could that be [Googles “bird flu,” accidentally clicks on the “News” tab] oh god damn it

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Dustin, 11/5/24

The thing about Dustin is that it’s a perfect machine of hateability, in the sense that there isn’t a single recurring character that I have any real warm feelings for. Dustin’s sister Meg in some ways escapes my ire the most, because she has very little in terms of revealed personality and exists only to make rude comments about her brother and parents and occasionally be reprimanded for dressing too slutty. Today, however, we learn that her misanthropic attitude extends beyond her family to the human race at large, and frankly I would love to learn more about Doomer Goth Meg in future installments of this strip.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/5/24

A sobering discovery of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is that, in many places that embraced electoral democracy, it functions less as a way for wise or efficacious policies and ideas to be debated and endorsed by the citizen body, and more as a head-counting exercise: different interest groups within a society, many of them ethnic- or clan-based, use the vote as a means to assert their numbers and power rather than to win in the marketplace of ideas. While this might not be what the Enlightenment philosophers and America’s founding fathers had in mind, you have to admit that the Smifs and the Barlows taunting each other by means of “I Voted” buttons is preferable to their usual means of settling disputes (murdering one another with antique rifles and whatever other makeshift weapons they can lay their hands on).