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Blondie, 6/18/24

Originally read that first panel as referring to “verse” as in poetry, then was briefly disappointed when it turned out I was incorrect, then thought, you know what? I don’t need to hear what Blondie’s take on poetry is. Stay in your lane, Blondie! Blondie’s lane is doing funny onomatopoeias for snoring, and it’s thriving there.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/18/24

Honestly loving Loweezy’s exclamation point in the second panel here. Why, she had an entirely different idea about what Jughaid’s summer reading list was! Comics? Good heavens!

Dustin, 6/18/24

I also love Dustin’s dad expression of crushing despair in the final panel of this strip. Ha ha, it’s funny because he wants to die! And if he keeps drinking all that sugar, he just might!

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Dustin, 6/7/24

“Dustin can’t get a date” is a running bit in Dustin that usually I hate because the strips on this theme inevitably happen with supposed zoomers Dustin and Fitch trying to pick up girls at a fern bar rather than each of them sitting alone in their darkened bedroom swiping through “the apps” with dead eyes. But in the bigger picture, I wonder exactly how deep we’re supposed to think Dustin’s romantic failure goes. Has he ever had a steady relationship? Had sex? Kissed anyone? And, of course, since Dustin is himself a fictional character, we must extend these questions to the creators of the strip itself, because it seems insane to me that in today’s strip this unfortunately young lady already has her hand resting on the crook of Dustin’ elbow. Why would you think someone who has agreed to a date minutes ago under duress would do this? Is this what they think a date is?

Marvin, 6/7/24

Hey, did you just get a promotion at work? Did you ever consider that this is basically the same thing as having to wipe piss and shit off of a plastic chair? Honestly, we talk so much about how gross Marvin is that I think we underrate the fact that it’s also very, very depressing.

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Dustin, 5/31/24

Look, I get — believe me, I get — that it’s hard to mine jokes every single day out of a single premise, and sometimes when you’re doing a daily newspaper strip, you need a mechanism by which you can say “OK, this admittedly bad joke I thought up/heard/read in an email forward is my punchline today, idgaf, it’ll be funny if I have a stupid person say it.” But if you have to have two of these mechanisms, like “Dustin’s stupid friend” and “the stupid people who call into Dustin’s mom’s radio show,” that says something about where you’re at and it isn’t great.

Hagar the Horrible, 5/31/24

You know I like to spend time figuring out the whole historico-political situation of Hagar the Horrible, so I want to point out the guy in the kilt in the foreground, which tells me this takes place in a time when the Norse were the elite of a multi-ethnic world along the edges of the North Atlantic and Baltic, and stretching from Iceland to the Black Sea, and inhabited by Celts and Slavs as well as Vikings. Also apparently their culture had a prominent place for the ritual of the “fuck tunnel,” but I don’t really know anything about that. Not an expert admittedly but I have no reason to doubt the cartoon.

Dennis the Menace, 5/31/24

These are both good-looking shirts! I imagine that one of the joys of doing a newspaper comic strip is that you can always decide “I’m gonna draw some nice shirts today” and it will brighten up someone’s day. Specifically mine! Consider my day brightened, Dennis the Menace creative team.