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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.

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Dustin, 5/25/24

Syndicated newspaper comic strip creators love golf for some accursed reason, but I have to say that they’re generally pretty good about only doing jokes about aspects of golf that non-golfers know about through cultural osmosis, like that you can lose your ball in a sand or water trap, or that everyone who plays it fucking hates it for some reason. Today’s Dustin, however, requires you to know whether 112 is a good or a bad score. I mean, I guess it’s clear from context that it’s bad, but still: I think this is over the line. It made me dedicate some thought to the awful “sport of kings” [note to self: wait, is that horse racing? double-check this] when all I wanted to do is find out what specific kind of terrible asshole Dustin’s dad was going to be today. Unacceptable! Save it for your side gig submitting New Yorker-style single-panel cartoons to Golf Digest, creeps!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/25/24

“Living their retro-diner-roots-country life to the fullest” makes it sound very much like we’re seeing some unpleasant rockabilly LARP situation, possibly in a corporate “immersive experience” theme park run by whatever hedge fund currently owns the rights to the Johnny Rockets IP. And that’s the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is that this is foreplay!

Family Circus, 5/25/24

Ah, man, this is great. Now I know that whenever we see Billy dressed up to play sports, he feels like he’s under a microscope and is miserable most of the time! I’m a major Billy hater as you all well know, so this is a big win for me.