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Gasoline Alley, 11/10/22

Gasoline Alley is, I admit, one of those strips I read out of a sense of professional obligation rather than a true inborn enthusiasm. Yet one can derive a real satisfaction from achievements that are wholly professional in nature! For instance, I’ve managed to keep the “Rufus is fucking the mayor” plot thread close enough to the top of my mind that when I read the final panel of today’s strip I nodded sagely and thought to myself, “Ah, Walt’s going to get to ride on the back of a garbage truck, just like his hero Denzel Washington, because Rufus is fucking the mayor,” whereas I assume the typical comic reader simply shook their head in confusion and disgust before moving on to Garfield.

Judge Parker, 11/10/22

Oh, hey, remember how Abbey was running for mayor? Well, she lost, and she’s mainly mad that her ex, who for once in his life is doing something interesting, didn’t text her about it. Abbey is by my count the third character in this strip to unsuccessfully run for mayor, and frankly I can’t get enough of it. Keep losing, losers!

Dustin, 11/10/22

Look, I don’t care if Dustin dies first or his dad does. But one of them has got to go. At least one. They can’t keep taunting me like this.

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Dustin, 11/7/22

Oh, I’m sorry, did you think that the syndicated comic Dustin was done airing its petty grievances about air travel? Well, you thought wrong, buddy. Today’s petty grievance: when people fly on a commercial airline, an experience during which they are generally dehumanized in various ways, why don’t they simply choose to dress in a manner that society in the year 2022 reserves only for our most formal contexts, like a court appearance or a funeral? Is it because they don’t want to feel even less comfortable than they already do while they’re crammed into a too-small seat for three to seven hours? Is it because, simply as a practical matter, the nature of air travel often results in the clothes you’re wearing getting wrinkled or sweaty or soiled? Is it because human civilization is falling into a state of barbarism? Probably the last one, right? Anyway, the first panel here gives you a good hint as to which airline’s negative vibes provided the material for these strips, but doesn’t spell it out because presumably large multinational corporations are better equipped to crush a syndicated newspaper comic strip’s creative team in court than, say, a Tampa-area Mercedes dealership is.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/7/22

I was wondering why Funky Winkerbean decided to tinker with its timeline, again, making the main cast’s recent high school reunion their fiftieth and pushing the characters from late middle age well into retirement territory. Now we’ve learned that it’s because of plans to change the setting to a near-future dystopia where accelerating climate change is increasingly impossible to ignore. Sure, the folks in Westview didn’t care much about famine-inducing disruption to agriculture in the tropics or the Colorado River basically drying up, but now that “climate damage” has somehow delayed the shipment of an anthology of comics that were published decades ago, we’re going to get to the bottom of this global warming business, by God.

Six Chix, 11/7/22

Someday I hope to have a meeting with a Hollywood exec with the promise of a “hot IP” and go in hard with the pitch that everything Franz Kafka wrote is now in the public domain. Sure, we all know Gregor Samsa died at the end of “The Metamorphosis” (actually, I had forgotten this, I had to read the plot summary for the story on Wikipedia), but what if he had instead left his depressing home and unloving family in Prague and struck out on his own to find his own way in the world? And what if he ended up as a stoner doorman somewhere in New York City? I think this would be a great eight-episode limited series on Paramount+.

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Dennis the Menace, 11/4/22

I actually think it’s more or less fine to do a syndicated newspaper strip that takes place in some kind of permanent 1950s boomer childhood fantasy world, especially for legacy strips that were born in that era anyway. I do feel like if you’re going to have a 1950s housewife tending to a rascally little tyke in overalls who’s allowed to roam the suburban neighborhood freely with a slingshot, the price you pay is that you can’t have said tyke mouth off about “the supply chain” or whatever. It’s too stale to be actually topical but topical enough that Dennis definitely shouldn’t be talking about it, which puts it in an uncanny valley spot that’s ironically pretty menacing, just not the kind of menacing I like.

The Lockhorns, 11/4/22

Meanwhile, because I contain multitudes, I love it when The Lockhorns get vaguely contemporary. Leroy losing all his money in a crypto scam? Yes, yes I say, give me more of this. The Lockhorns are Millennials after all, so it adds up.

Dustin, 11/4/22

Speaking of topical matters, I did a piece in 2020 about the initial wave of the COVID pandemic and the comics, but didn’t broach the subject that maybe I should’ve: what if a comic character actually died of COVID? I think possibly the funniest possible way for Dustin to dramatically stop publishing would’ve been to have its unloved title character die of wild-type COVID in April 2020, unmourned by his family or his temp agency. Sadly, in late 2022, this is probably just a cold, or at worst an Omicron infection that he’s vaccinated against and will get over, but fingers crossed that he’s maybe got that mutant flu/RSV hybrid that’s going around and we’ll be freed from this strip’s nonsense.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/4/22

Very sad that Summer has chosen a book topic that will require her to interview all her dad’s insufferable old friends, but I suppose the big reveal that the town’s mailman was violating federal law and everyone’s privacy for decades will at least result in a flurry of local sales interest.

Shoe, 11/4/22

I love it when the TV announces that regular programming has been pre-empted for some undisclosed reason and also refuses to tell me what it’s been replaced by, a normal occurrence that happens in real life all the time. Anyway, do you think today’s strip falls into the distressingly frequent Shoe category of “It’s fucked up that they have birds doing this joke”? Discuss.