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Dustin, 1/12/21

You know, I’ve griped about Dustin slamming on millennials (as represented by the strip’s title character), but I haven’t put that much effort into it because, enh, millennials, probably they have it coming. But when you decide to come after librarians? When you say that librarians don’t want people eating and drinking in the library (which literally ruins books that cost money to replace that they’d have to pay out of their shrinking budget) and they don’t want people reshelving books (which patrons aren’t trained to do and if they screw it up it makes books difficult or impossible to find) and they don’t want people talking on their cell phones in the library (this is literally annoying to everybody, who could possibly object to idiots talking loudly on their cell phones in the library being asked to leave) because they’re frumpy martinets who love rules? That’s when I declare that you’re garbage person and I swear a sacred oath to destroy you. Be warned!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/12/21

So it looks like Barney Google and Snuffy Smith has decided on what the defining feature of its hot new character, Li’l Sparky, is going to be: it’s going to be puns based on noises horses make. As we can tell today, a key aspect of this bit is that Li’l Sparky is going to really insist that everyone acknowledge that he’s doing it, until all the other horses (and, I assume, eventually the non-horse characters) come to dislike him. Can’t wait!

Mary Worth, 1/12/21

“Greta, our friend Eve started weeping openly in public but doesn’t want to talk about it. Is there some way I can make this about me?”

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Blondie, 12/20/20

The “Frosty the Snowman” and “Jingle Bells” parodies here are of course very easy to identify, but “It’s the most wonderful food season of all” is driving me crazy. Surely it’s not meant to be “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.” Surely. It doesn’t scan at all. I don’t expect much from legacy comics at this point, but I expect better than that.

Dustin, 12/20/20

It’s no secret that I genuinely loathe Dustin’s dad. But in the spirit of the season, I’m glad he’s having a good time engaging in his favorite Christmas celebration: watching It’s A Wonderful Life and drinking glass after glass of wine and pissing a lot, confident each time he stumbles into the bathroom that yes, he came in here to piss, he still has at least some tenuous grip on the world around him.

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Shoe, 12/1/20

As is so often the case with Shoe, the eyes really tell the story here. Roz’s are bugged out in panic, of course, as she watches her life’s work and only source of income literally going up in smoke. The Perfesser is experiencing sympathetic shock in panel one, but by panel two has already wound down to his typical heavy-lidded ennui. He’s realized he’s got to die somewhere and somehow, so it might as well be here, where he’s wasted so much of his life, via smoke inhalation.

Beetle Bailey, 12/1/20

Beetle Bailey is of course a strip where every single character’s name is incredibly, painfully on the nose. The most recently introduced recurring character is a “computer whiz” tech specialist name Chips Gizmo, for Pete’s sake. So I’m not surprised that they needed the name of a general for a boxing gag and so just went straight to “Dempsey”; I am surprised, and pleased, that they made him young, handsome, and so clearly and wholesomely pleased about the prospect of punching General Halftrack in the face.

Dustin, 12/1/20

Look, man, he asked you if you were excited about the conference. You could’ve just said “no,” you know? Jesus, is everyone in this strip just incredibly sour about everything?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/1/20

From the feature that thrilled you with “Rex waking up” — get ready for the edge-of-your-seat excitement of “Buck falling asleep”!