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Archive: Dustin

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Jon minus reasons to live

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Garfield, 7/19/25

True comics internet oldheads remember Garfield Minus Garfield, a webcomic that, as the title implied, took daily Garfield comics in which Jon and Garfield interacted and simply removed Garfield from them. This became a minor internet sensation back in 2008, and apparently tickled Jim Davis so much that it became an officially licensed book. That was many years ago, and I hope I don’t sound churlish when I say that the concept never really worked for me because it seemed slightly off. Surely the joke should not be that Jon is alone and talking to nobody; Garfield should remain in the frame but his thought balloons should be removed, to show us the “real” world where Jon is just a depressed and/or deranged man talking to his cat, who, like all cats, cannot understand him or talk back. Today’s strip is a great example of why that would work. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” says Jon, with absolutely no joy in his eyes, before staring at his cat for two panels in absolute silence.

Mary Worth, 7/19/25

21st century commercial air travel is, in terms of deaths or injuries per mile, the safest form of transportation humankind has ever produced. I guess it’s slightly more dangerous than simply staying at home and sitting absolutely still, so technically Mary isn’t wrong when she says it’s “a privilege and also a risk,” but she is being extremely overdramatic. She’s also referring to flying coach via Denver to New York City, a place she’s visited at least twice before, as “explor[ing] the unknown,” so she’s really on one today, I guess.

Dustin, 7/19/25

Helen is clearly used to Ed not specifying that he wants his bacon crispy and then complaining when he gets it and it’s not crispy, so she intervenes in panel one here, hoping that their waitress will not in fact hate them by the end of the meal. By panel three we can already see her effort was in vain.

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Dustin’s been “halfway there” his whole life and will never get any further

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Mark Trail, 6/28/25

There’s a new Mark Trail adventure starting this week that appears to be about fairly straightforward environmental issues — poop in the swimming hole, I guess? — but I want to point out today’s strip because I love how tuff and mad about it Rusty’s little friend in the last panel looks. “Poop? In my swimming hole?” he thinks, striking a fierce pose that shows off his water wings. “Someone’s gonna get punched for this, I sure hope!”

Crankshaft, 6/28/25

Normally, if your dad returned from a trip to New York City singing a mangled version of one of the songs from the Broadway show he took in during his visit, that would be a good sign that he had a pretty good time. Not Crankshaft, though! We all know he’s incapable of joy. This just means that some sensory input got trapped in the malaprop center of his brain, irritating it — and, by extension, irritating him and everyone around him — further.

Dustin, 6/28/25

Ha ha, yes, Bon Jovi, the person who immediately comes to mind when a typical Zoomer like Dustin tries to summon up the name of a long-haired sex symbol! Now, it’s possible that Dustin picked Bon Jovi for this little rhetorical move specifically because he thought the man might appeal to his agèd mother, but keep in mind that (a) Slippery When Wet came out 39 years ago, so it’s fully possible for people with early-20s children to have been too young to get on the Bon Jovi train, and (b) Dustin obviously has never bothered to get to know his parents well enough to figure out what cultural figures from the past they might find attractive.

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Facial expression theater

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Dustin, 6/26/25

I really love the fact that Ed looks utterly joyless as he prepares to shove that forbidden donut down his donut hole. He doesn’t even want it, really; he’s just eating it to make some kind of point in his long-running battle with his wife that she’s never even going to find out about.

Pluggers, 6/26/25

This plugger, on the other hand, is gazing upon that expired can of beans with a keen expression of mingled trepidation and desire that borders on the erotic. Surely there are some risks worth taking, he thinks. Is botulism really such a terrible way to go out?

Hi and Lois, 6/26/25

Obviously Dot and Ditto did not enjoy Hi’s bedtime story, so I have to assume that the big smiles on their faces indicate that, in the moment just before they slipped off into unconsciousness, they realized that finally they weren’t going to have to listen to any more blather about fucking golf.