Post Content

Dustin, 12/10/23

A problem in comics in which nobody ages is that the viewpoint characters birth year gets later and later, even though their creators get older and older, creating an increasingly dissonant portrayal. This just gets exacerbated in strips like Dustin, which were deliberately created to do Generation Gap commentary, and whose Boomers vs. Millennials origin has now drifted confusingly into Gen X vs. Zoomers without getting any of the signifiers right. Like, Dustin’s parents now are clearly in the early-to-mid 50s, an age range I know [cough] a little bit about, and I’m here to tell you that in 2023 those people are not the ones somehow leaving the house without their wallet but with a checkbook. Anyway, I guess the final panel is supposed to be from the viewpoint of the customer service worker, who’s visualizing Helen as being from a different era, but I’m choosing to believe that Helen is actually so charmed by the fancy, old-fashioned process of writing a check that she feels like a pretty, pretty princess.

Dennis the Menace, 12/10/23

Look, I understand that the daily and Sunday strips for many legacy properties are done by entirely separate creative teams because … well, actually, I don’t understand why that happens, but I do understand that it’s a thing that does happen, and I think that if it does, the daily people and the Sunday people should check in with each other once in a while, you know?

Shoe, 12/10/23

I actually really appreciate the way that Skyler locks heavy-lidded eyes with us in the little mini-panel in the middle of this strip. “Brace yourself for the punchline,” he’s telling us. “It’s gonna suck ass.”

Post Content

Blondie, 11/12/23

You ever notice how most of the women in Blondie have pretty normal-looking eyes but most of them men have these inky black stretched out ovals that take up half the height of their skulls? Honestly, despite years of reading this strip, I really hadn’t, until they decided to do a whole Sunday strip where the premise is that Dagwood just had his pupils dilated at optometrist, and now it’s all I can think about — which, honestly, is more appealing to dwell on than “ho ho, Dagwood would certainly be horny, if he could see better,” so I’m not complaining.

Mary Worth, 11/12/23

Having been fortified by a Mary Worth pep talk, Keith has dug deep into his Marine training and is going to fight for a decent, meaningful relationship with Kitty and then his daughter, no matter how fraught these conversations get or how hard he has to tr– oh, wait, what’s this, he got halfway through his apology and then Kitty was like “Oh, sorry I was so mean, let’s have a decent, meaningful relationship going forward. My treat! We’ll have lunch and I’ll explain how you can make friends with our daughter. Don’t worry, it won’t be difficult.” Problem solved, everyone! Problem sovled.

Six Chix, 11/12/23

Actually, Tom, I think what they’d say is that it’s been thousands of years since the civilization of their Builders passed away and not once since have they been bedewed with sacrificial blood. They’re thirsty! So thirsty! They’re an ancient megalithic monument, so they definitely don’t know what TripAdvisor is, but they know what human blood tastes like and they miss it terribly.

Dustin, 11/12/23

I’m kind of burned out on raging against Dustin but I do want to point out that Dustin’s parents — or, I guess more accurately, the people who write the strip from Dustin’s parents’ point of view — think getting Doordash/Grubhub delivery involves calling somebody. Jokes on you, dummies! Kids today are even less motivated than you think!

Post Content

Dustin, 11/8/23

There’s a lot of reasons to dislike Dustin, and one of the biggest is that it was cooked up with the premise of “Ha ha, these lazy millennials are moving back in with their parents because they’re slackers who refuse to get a job” and then was launched in newspapers in January of 2010, when the Great Recession was at its peak and unemployment stood at more than 10%. Anyway, the family dynamic has remained constant over the subsequent decade plus of economic change, and so today, with some the strongest employment numbers in living memory, we can maybe start hating Dustin for his own personal shortcomings rather than as a symbol of his generation; but I think we also might need to consider that in the world of Dustin, it has never stopped being 2010. Certainly it would explain why someone in their early 20s might talk about “the Brad Pitt look” as if that were a novel and contemporary cultural reference, although I guess it would make even more sense if the strip were actually taking place in 1997.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/8/23

At least in the context of the Barney Google and Snuffy Smith Present … Sparkplug’s Grandson Li’l Sparky strips, horses in the Snuffyverse are capable of human speech. But still, it makes me very sad that they apparently need to exchange money for goods and services. They’re domesticated animals! Shouldn’t they just get a nice feed bag in their paddock to meet their needs?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/8/23

“It doesn’t have anything to do with health, so it’s not my problem! Some people say that there’s a ‘mental’ kind of health, but I’m not buying it.”