Post Content

Blondie, 1/4/25

Yes, I still read the newspaper comics strip Blondie every day, and I actually learn things from it! For instance, Herb saying “mega-horsepower” made me wonder if horsepower is in fact part of the overall International System of Units and can take prefixes like “mega”. Turns out it isn’t; horsepower measures the same thing as watts, although there is a slight difference between metric horsepower (735.5 watts) and imperial horsepower (745.7 watts). It also turns out that a typical snowblower is rated around 5 horsepower, so if we take Herb literally, his new toy has a power output about 3 million times greater than that. Dagwood would not be comically encrusted with snow by it; instead, he and his entire suburban neighborhood would’ve been vaporized instantly the moment Herb turned it on. Sorry if this offends but I must tell the cold, hard truth about the physics involved here.

Gil Thorp, 1/4/25

I have to admit that pleading “But I’m the voice of Milford sports!” is very funny, in terms of ways to defend yourself for getting in trouble for being gin-drunk on the job. Anyway, like all the damned souls toiling in new media, the primary metric on which Marty is judged professionally is going viral, and you’d think going on the air intoxicated would be a good way to do that, but based on his facial expression in the final panel I’m guessing he did it in a very depressing way, not a fun way.

Family Circus, 1/4/24

Billy admits it! He and the other Keane Kids aren’t “real people,” but are instead soulless abominations who should not be walking this earth. “Jeffy,” says Jeffy’s shirt, desperately trying to distract you from the fact that he is a Thing that does not deserve a name.

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 12/17/24

A thing that fascinates me is that deep in the DNA of the daily comics is the idea that their artists conceive of them as a black-and-white strip where the blacks and whites represent a platonic natural-color “reality” one conceptual layer down, even though probably the majority of their readers see them in a form where someone (not the original artist) has added color to the strip in ways that don’t or can’t reflect that “reality”. I realize that was an extremely complicated sentence, but a simple way to illustrate it is that Beetle Bailey’s Miss Buxley, in “reality,” wears a red dress to work, as depicted in the Sunday strips where the artists do the coloring themselves, but in the black-and-white dailies this solid color is represented by black, even in strips that subsequently have color added for online display.

Anyway, I bring all that because Zero’s red hat is clearly a bit of whimsy added by the colorist rather than something intended by the original artist, though comics are a collaborate process and I enjoy what everyone brings to the table. According to an article on the Smart Hospitality Supplies website (and who am I to argue with the severely underpaid content drone or, possibly, large language model-based AI that wrote this), a red chef’s hat “can signify passion, power, and determination. It might hint at a chef who is fearless in their culinary experiments, pushes boundaries and isn’t afraid to spice things up. This could translate into bold flavour combinations, innovative techniques, or a drive to keep service running smoothly and effectively in the kitchen.” Is writing a phone number in whipped cream an “innovative technique”? We’ll allow it. We’re also told a blue chef’s hat “can represent tranquillity, depth, and wisdom,” so clearly some thought was put into adhering to Zero’s character here.

Gil Thorp, 12/17/24

Speaking of passion and determination, Coach Perm Gerads, fresh off defeating the Mudlarks, is now aiming to defeat Marty Moon’s sobriety. Gil’s bartendress girlfriend (?) is hesitant about enabling all this, but maybe she shouldn’t have come to work today wearing a shirt that says “DO IT” (???) in big letters.

Family Circus, 12/17/24

You’re on the right track, Billy, but I’m guessing Grandma doesn’t want to see St. Nicholas of Myra in his bastardized Coca-Cola pitchman form delivering a cheery “Hi!” to adherents to orthodoxy and heresy alike. Surely there was a card you could’ve gotten her depicting the fiery 4th century cleric slapping the heretic Arius in the face for preaching that Jesus was a created being rather and not coequal to and coeternal with God the Father? That would be the sort of thing to get her going.

Mary Worth, 12/17/24

Hey, remember Dawn’s friend Cathy, who seemed pretty convinced that it was Dawn’s fault that her drip boyfriend Jared dumped her, because she was a wanton whore who liked to go to the club (with Cathy) while Jared was having an emotional affair with one of his physically abused patients? Well, she seems pretty intrigued by the idea that Jared might have forgiven Dawn enough to invite her to have a Christmas threeway, which scientists are already calling “the saddest sexual act in the history of the human species.”

Post Content

Gasoline Alley, 12/16/24

So the whole point of these uncanny children going to space in the first place was so that they could write a school report about the solar system, and despite the fact that they almost died out there and had to be rescued by their evil talking doll, they didn’t even bother applying the awesome knowledge they acquired first hand to their assignment and just had an AI write it. And it did a shitty job! Which they should’ve known it would do, because it was the thing that almost got them killed in space in the first place, due to its incompetence! And yeah, sure, writing a report for elementary school is a lot easier than navigating an interplanetary craft, but I’m sorry, if a machine comes close to killing me, I stop using that machine, even for lower-stakes stuff. I’m not going to say these kids deserved to die on the cold surface of Mars, but they definitely deserve bad grades on those papers.

Family Circus, 12/16/24

The joke here, I guess, is that Daddy has forced Jeffy to say this to a hapless mall Santa because he wants to set Jeffy’s own expectations correctly, but look at that face. That’s a guy who still Believes. “C’mon, Santa,” he’s thinking, “don’t fuck this up for me this year.”

Alice, 12/16/24

Uh, gee, Alice, do you think there’s an alien base on the moon? Alice’s boyfriend (?)’s attitude towards Alice (the character) really represents the reader’s position vis-a-vis Alice (the comic strip) here: Asking neutral questions, not making direct eye contact, sitting very still, hoping for the best.

Pluggers, 12/16/24

“Pluggers don’t wear gloves outside in Minnesota in December” is I think the point where we start doing wellness checks on the pluggers in our lives. Don’t wait until they end up in the hospital getting their fingers amputated!