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Pluggers, 5/11/22

The historian Ronald Syme wrote that the Emperor Augustus, who died at 77, “outlast[ed] the friends, the enemies, and even the memory of his early days,” and I think about that a lot as I get older, about the way that, if you’re lucky enough to live to a ripe old age, you become something of an alien, as the world you grew up in recedes further and further in the past. And what do you get by way of compensation? Well, there’s more life, I suppose, which is not to be sneezed at. And old age maybe takes the edge off a bit by softening our vision and our minds, so we come to perceive the world through a comforting and gradually thickening haze. Unfortunately, modern society and so-called “advanced” medicine has allowed us to reverse this process, so that we can see, with abrupt clarity, the ruin that we have become. As usual, Pluggers, a strip I have been forced to respect more and more, has given me much to think about today.

Gil Thorp, 5/11/22

Speaking of seeing, Nolan Ryan could see, so I don’t know what to tell you, kid. God bless Scooter for sticking up for his tragically blind friend, but as a guy who was once a loser tween who blurted out some ill-thought-out defenses of his fellow losers, I can guarantee you that he will only feel more embarrassed in the coming innings, as Valley Tech sends Greggg flailing aimlessly at bunt after bunt after bunt that he can only hear.

Dustin, 5/11/22

“Can you imagine? It’s 2022! How would we even cash it?”

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Dustin, 5/6/22

Dustin is a truly amazing strip, one whose whole purpose is to poke fun of the foibles of young people despite clearly having no real sense of how young people live their lives, and one of the ways this manifests, as I have frequently griped, is that the young people characters go to fern bars in order to seek out romantic entanglements, like it’s the god-damned Reagan Administration or something. I guess some garbled communication has filtered back to Dustin HQ that modern hookup culture is entirely focused on dating apps now, which could explain why this young lady is at a fern bar but also on her laptop for some reason.

Hi and Lois, 5/6/22

I was going to make fun of Hi for seeming so shocked that Chip and his date might go dutch, but then I realized he has that same slack-jawed befuddled look in panel one as the conversation begins, too. Honestly, he looks like that a lot of the time! That Hi Flagston, just a befuddled dipshit stumbling his way through life on the funny pages!

Pluggers, 5/6/22

Ha ha, I absolutely love the look on that dog-man’s face. It’s gonna be real horror show in that house and this guy knows it.

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Dustin, 5/4/22

I’m going give the “joke” in today’s Dustin the zero attention it deserves and instead will focus on a background detail that is driving me crazy. Whenever I do something like this, I get a million comments that gaslight me like, “Josh, it’s actually 100% normal for someone to make and eat an ice cream cone at home, you’re the weird one” but: do you freaks really have ice cream cones at home???? I mean, a big thing of ice cream in the freezer, sure, that’s normal, but decent people eat it out of a bowl, or out of the carton over the sink. Having a box (?) of ice cream cones in the pantry (??), ready to fill with ice cream at any moment, seems decadent and perverse to me, but I’m just a simple, honest American who maybe doesn’t understand this modern world anymore, just like Dustin’s atlas-loving dad.

Mary Worth, 5/4/22

Wow, what’s the most boring way we could get caught up on the background of Ian and Helen’s sordid past? Is it Toby calmly telling Mary about it while eliding the juicy details? Because that’s what we’re getting. This blows. Damn it, she’s probably not even going to angrily crush that muffin into crumbs as she tries and fails to stop herself from visualizing Helen in Ian’s arms!

Mutts, 5/4/22

NOBODY EVER CLAIMED SHE WAS

THE SONG IS “SHEENA IS A PUNK ROCKER,” LIKE ONE OF SEVERAL

WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT, YOU CLOYING LITTLE DOG