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The Phantom, 4/6/25

One thing I respect about the Phantom is that, for a strip that started out with a fairly dubious colonialist attitude, it now makes a good faith effort to imagine what life would be like realistically in Bangalla, a post-colonial African state that balances a modern capital inhabited by a Westernized elite with a large citizen body that still lives more traditional lifestyles. That’s why I’m intrigued by this new storyline, in which a group of Wambesi living in Mawitaan return home to [squints at last panel] [record scratch] THE UNGRAVED? Best case scenario, it’s some nightmare where corpses are strewn about the village; worst case scenario will be a zombie situation that will have me taking back all the stuff I just said about how far this strip has come.

Dustin and Beetle Bailey, 4/6/25

Ah, it’s time for some fun dream sequences starring two of the funnies’ most callow young people! The Dustin one is straightforward enough to parse — Dustin, who lives with the father who hates him, finds himself trapped on a tiny island with him, a horizon that he can never reach visible in every direction as his father keeps demanding he get a job just in time for another general economic collapse. Beetle Bailey is a bit sillier — ha ha, he’s sick of peeling potatoes, so he’s dreaming of Cookie as a giant angry potato! — but I have to admit that the potato-man seems more and more unsettling the more I look it. The way his body is all head, the way his arms apparently connect to his back, the way he waves around a knife that will be used to slice off the skin of his fellow potatoes and, ultimately, himself? … well, it’s an unsettling look into Beetle’s subconscious, I’ll just say that.

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Mark Trail, 2/11/25

Oh, sorry I didn’t update you on the “Mark helps return a displaced manatee to the sea” storyline, or even [checks archives] tell you about it in the first place, but today’s strip pretty much recaps the high points so I don’t have to, in a real reversal of this blog’s original mission statement. The whole thing about the guys in bear costumes is actually a story that was ripped from the real-life headlines, except the real-life guys were actually just doing some light insurance fraud rather than trying to prevent the return of a manatee to the sea for murky climate-change-denial reasons. Anyway, I’m showcasing today’s strip because I’m furious that Mark is doing “flight” wordplay about guys in bear costumes, and you can tell that foreground bird in the last panel is upset that it’s been dragged into this thing as a fig leaf. “They’ll be hibernating for the winter … in jail” was right there!

Luann, 2/11/25

On the note of returning to some of my old favorites, I’ve decided to start reading Luann again, I guess because it’s worth it to inflict deliberate pain on myself just to feel something? Anyway today’s strip is about Brad trying to bake Toni a cake but the whole thing is actually an elaborate metaphor about his dick that’s both fully transparent and also doesn’t hold up to any degree of scrutiny, so I’m glad to see the vibes have not shifted too much.

Crankshaft, 2/11/25

Also, Crankshaft is back, in your life and mine! God, look at how completely dead Crankshaft is behind his eyes in panel three here, I love it, put it in a spoon and feed it to me like I’m a little baby that loves Crankshaft’s pain. Do you think the implication is that, now that marijuana is legal in Ohio, it’s not clear what “under the influence” specifically means? Or is it simply that the mayor may have gotten blotto after drinking too many Budweiser beers? Sorry, it’s neither: Crankshaft isn’t “implying” anything, he’s merely saying vaguely wordplay-shaped sounds while his soul screams endlessly inside, begging for a death that will never come.

Dustin, 2/11/25

Wow, Dustin’s mom has decided to divorce his dad! Obviously a big move but I think we can all say that it’s not a particularly surprising one.

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Blondie, 2/4/25

Today is in fact “Thank A Mail Carrier Day,” or at least it is according to National Day Calendar Dot Com, and I’m sure that’s good enough for the fake-holiday-obsessed Blondie creative team so it’s good enough for me. Now, while I always think it’s polite to thank someone who provides you with a service, even if they are just doing their job, this does seem like a kind of silly holiday, but you will note that the National Day Calendar Dot Com link provided above describes the event as National Thank A Mail Carrier Day, not Your Mail Carrier Day, which probably reflects the fact that most of us do not interact with our mail carrier on a regular basis, and many routes don’t have the same carrier every day, or may have different carriers delivering letters and packages at different times. Certainly most of us don’t have a consistent mail carrier who somehow manages to get there during a time when a 9 to 5 office worker would be home, and who hands us our mail personally and hangs around to shoot the shit a little bit instead of just putting the letters in the easily accessible mailbox and being on their way. Dagwood should be thanking him!

Dustin, 2/4/25

Dustin (the comic strip) is about the eternal struggle between dipshit son and asshole dad, and I reserve the bulk of my ire for the asshole dad, not because I deny Dustin’s dipshittery, but because the dad is usually depicted as the “correct” agonist in their conflict, when the true enlightened assessment is that they’re both wrong. Still, I’ve often found it unrealistic how quickly Dustin gets shot down in these anachronistic scenarios — like, he’s not hideous or anything and surely it takes a little while for his subpar personality to become obvious? But if he’s really leading with stuff like “I got my hair cut today,” then, yeah, I get it.

Dennis the Menace, 2/4/25

Oh no! Dennis has worked out for himself the idea of inelastic demand … truly one of the more menacing of economic laws!

Beetle Bailey, 2/4/25

I love how dead eyed everyone other than the visiting officer is in panel two. It’s like, yeah, there’s some wacky stuff going on here, but they’ve been dealing with it for like 70 years of strip time now and they’re pretty much over it. They’re not just “used to it”; frankly, they’re exhausted.