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Daddy Daze, 5/4/24

Look, I’m just going to say it: I find the Daddy Daze baby, with his fixed, manic smile, his uncanny ability to move about and manipulate objects despite his infancy, and his inscrutable language of “ba”s, to be off-putting and frankly a little scary. So no, I’m not on board with the Daddy Daze daddy telling him to go out and start collecting memories from the very brains of his hapless victims.

Family Circus, 5/4/24

I know the upcoming Garfield movie is a big media event and the studio is making lots of deals to cross-promote it everywhere. I’m just a little surprised and frankly disappointed that the Catholic Church decided to get in on the action.

Beetle Bailey, 5/4/24

Wait, if you’re supposed to wear civvies to the General’s party, why’s he wearing a uniform? I was going to say that Beetle Bailey was drawing on its deep knowledge of contemporary military culture and uniform rules for the nuances of this joke, but then I realized how absurd that was, had a good laugh, and then went to lie down. Anyway, I think it’s just a mistake.

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Family Circus, 4/9/24

The “fun” of a Dolly Family Circus gag, to the extent that such a thing exists, is often about the gap between her smug, know-it-all affect and her actual knowledge; we see, in a single panel, both her hubris and her comeuppance. The other stock Dolly joke is just her tattling on someone, which is even less fun. Today’s panel is of the first variety, but I’m sorry, this is barely a darnedest thing we’re dealing with here — “hitter” and “header” sound very close or even identical in many English dialects, including in the Baltimore-Philly corridor that is the Keane clan’s ancestral home, and you easily can see why the sense confusion between the two words arises in this context. Sorry, I will not be cruelly mocking an innocent child for this one! (Open to cruelly mocking her at other times, especially in the tattletale strips.)

Crock, 4/9/24

It’s wild that this strip was written probably in like 2004 and was extremely incorrect in its terminology usage then, but today if you just changed “iPod” to “AirPod” it would be exactly right and probably along the lines of what the author was originally thinking of. If we went back and analyzed all the old strips, would we find that Crock was prescient of coming trends? No, absolutely not, why would even think that, get outta here.

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Family Circus, 3/31/24

Some might think that Billy’s smug expression in the second panel here is just because he thought of a good (i.e., very bad) pun for his little fill-in cartoon. Those people aren’t familiar with what a little shit Billy is. It’s actually because he thought “Jesus is the Son, and he’s rising … hey, you know who else is the son? Me! Easter is the day for all of us sons, doing our thing, getting recognition for it! Except Jeffy, obviously. And the other one, the one who doesn’t talk, what’s his name.”

Hi and Lois, 3/31/24

Did you think you were going to be able to get through one sacred holiday without your terrible children ruining it by being little turds? Hi and Lois, the edgy modern newspaper comic for today’s cynical world, is here to deliver a resounding no on that point.