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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”!

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Blondie, 11/24/20

I genuinely enjoy the range of human facial expressions on display in the final panel here. Glasses Guy is interested, very interested, Token Carpool Lady is just beginning to shift from being intrigued to being disturbed, and Herb is miserable, absolutely miserable. Not sure what any of those emotions have to do with Dagwood’s gluttony, which should be entirely unsurprising to any of them, but I enjoy them nevertheless.

Dustin, 11/24/20

You can say a lot about Dustin’s retrograde cultural politics, and lord knows I have, but if you squint at it, it’s at least kind of progressive that they gave the self-loathing-dieting-verging-towards-eating-disorder to the dad character and not the mom. Anyway, I really like the last panel in today’s strip. He’s not even enjoying the donuts anymore, but he’s going to keep eating them anyway, presumably in a stubborn attempt to prove something to somebody.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/24/20

I’m also digging Sarah’s facial expression in panel two today. It’s clear she’s visualizing something like a digital anal thermometer that connects to your computer via Bluetooth, which the Morgan clinic will be happy to set you up with an installment plan for.

Gil Thorp, 11/24/20

Ah ha, finally we have the big fun moment in any Gil Thorp storyline, where the season’s two big plots are mashed awkwardly together. This football season those two plots are “Newcomer Corina Karenna is sexual catnip” and “two Mudlark QBs are duking it out for the top spot,” and the way they’re combining them is by having both boys come over to Corina’s house and engage in hand-to-hand combat, for … the starting QB job? Corinna’s affections? Doesn’t really matter, the important question is how oiled up they’re going to be while they do it.