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Dustin, 2/27/19

“Ha ha, my husband and I haven’t been able to come up with sexual feelings for one another for years. We sure do fight about money, though!” I’m beginning to grudgingly accept that Dustin is in fact a neutral observer in the ongoing Boomer-Millennial wars, in the sense that it mostly exists to illustrate how both generations suck and that people in general are pretty terrible.

Mary Worth, 2/27/19

I am of course going to bring you detailed coverage of each and every one of Estelle’s hell-paramours for as long as she continues going on dates, or, as the narration box refers to it, has “experiences with online dating,” which sounds like a phrase cooked up by Silverdaters’ marketing team. Anyway, this guy’s a real asshole, but you have to admit that his fashion choices are on point. A purple vest over an olive shirt that has a turquoise-tipped collar, to match his turquoise bolo tie! [chef’s kiss]

Beetle Bailey, 2/27/19

A “fun” thing Beetle Bailey has been doing lately is a series of strips where Beetle is shown to be uninterested in Miss Buxley’s sexual advances. I’m not sure how much body language I can detect in that second panel, but it sure looks like Beetle is sitting there with his arms crossed sullenly. He may have created a makeshift privacy cover, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to neck like a common harlot.

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Blondie, 1/17/19

To me, the best part of this comic, which posits that Dagwood is an animal test subject in some vast, mysterious laboratory, is that he’s failing to validate whatever experiment is being conducted. Blondie might imagine him fulfilling some higher being’s expectations for coffee’s effect on human motivation, but in real life there he is in bed, stubbornly refusing to be chemically motivated. It’s beautiful to me, though surely like all experimental subjects he’ll be disposed of soon enough.

Dick Tracy, 1/17/19

One of the people working on a Dick Tracy-derived performance that involves multiple layers of nostalgia, each resonating with a smaller and smaller audience, feels so unfulfilled by the exercise that he needs to drink himself stupid in order to carry on with it! Hopefully this is not a disturbing look behind the scenes at the strip.

Mary Worth, 1/17/19

MICHAEL [to himself]: “Oh, snap, this chick doesn’t need my help with the assignment, she must really be good at English lit. But how am I gonna get her to sleep with me then? I know, I’ll bust out some big words. Chicks who love English lit love big words!”

MICHAEL [aloud]: “Are you an English literature aficionado?”

Dustin, 1/17/19

Maybe I’m wrong about Dustin not adequately covering both sides of the Boomer-Millennial divide. Sure, the comic makes fun of today’s youths and their habit of just dozing off in the middle of the work day, but it also points out that today’s old people hate their families so much that it’s literally killing them.

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Dustin, 1/8/19

It may not have been obvious from the Dustins I’ve showcased here but the gimmick of Dustin is that Dustin is a 23-year-old college graduate who has moved back in with his parents and is having Failure To Launch problems. As a Gen-Xer, I am a neutral party in the raging war between Baby Boomers and Millennials, and I hereby declare that Dustin is really shitty in its treatment of young people! Like surely there is humor to be mined from this conflict of worldviews but instead we get things like today, “Ha ha, youths can’t hold down a job because they just spontaneously fall asleep all the time! Meanwhile, the ADULTS who MADE THIS COUNTRY WHAT IT IS TODAY are going to enjoy some LEGITIMATE HIGHBROW CULTURE.”

Gil Thorp, 1/8/19

I appreciate it when bit players in the comics really give it their all in the one or two panels they appear. It’s subtle, but I’m particularly enjoying the “ain’t I a stinker?” realness being served up by the employee of [squints] S-Kybomi Outdoor Media Solutions here. This may be the Best Performance By A Working-Class Guest Character In A Continuity Comic since 2014’s iconic “Man In Hat Who Doesn’t Care About Doc Ock’s Runaway Tentacles Enjoys Sandwich.”

Six Chix, 1/8/19

As we all know, you can take an expensive vacation to Paris, go to the Louvre, get lost in the Louvre, get annoyed by the Louvre, realize that you could do a comic about your experience at the Louvre, get paid to do that comic, and then write the entire cost of your trip off on your taxes. But can you write the cost of a trip to Paris off on your taxes if you just make fun a comic doing that? We’ll see what my accountant says! Fingers crossed!