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Dustin, 7/29/24

Absolutely one of the most heartbreaking things about Dustin is that Dustin’s dad is a cruel asshole who will never love his son, and Dustin is a contemptible slacker who will never get his life together in a way that might cause his father to feel a shred of affection for him, but Dustin still wants his father to love him. Look at his face in that first panel: he knows that he’s figured out how to get his father to talk shit about some imaginary stupid young people who exist in his mind, rather than about his actual son, to his son’s face.

Hi and Lois, 7/29/24

The LIBERAL COMMUNISTS at PBS want you to spend your 6 o’clock hour like Hi in panel two: getting Ludovico techniqued from watching 60 uninterrupted minutes of war crimes. But your patriotic friends at the commercial networks know what you really want: 41 minutes of actionable News You Can Use and 19 minutes of ads for new breakthrough pharmaceutical products to ask your doctor about, which are also a kind of news you can use, if you think about it!

Family Circus, 7/29/24

Ha ha, YES Jeffy, you’ve got him dead to rights for unpatriotic thoughtcrime, time to have him sent to the reeducation camps and you’re FREE

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Gearhead Gertie, 7/18/24

Frank Sinatra died in a hospital with his wife by his side, which, when it comes to ways to die, is not the worst by any means. But consider: what if instead he had died onstage because he sang a song that was far too dangerous and lost control of it, while thousands of his fans looked on, horrified but deep down inside thrilled, because isn’t the possibility of death, no matter how slim, just the far edge of the same space of drama that brought them there in the first place? Obviously that’s not what pulls in concertgoers, that’s not really what live music is about, but also that’s why Gertie is still robust and full of energy, feeding on the visceral noise and violence and risk of NASCAR, and her husband is a pencil neck listening to his little records, a man whose requests to fly a giant Sinatra flag out front once in a while have been repeatedly nixed.

Family Circus, 7/18/24

Look, you can try to prevent your children from learning anything about sex and reproduction all you want, but eventually, in the absence of information, they will try figuring out how it all works on their own from whatever they can glean from their environment, and the results will honestly be much more disturbing than you can imagine.

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Six Chix, 7/10/24

Comics coloring errors have been a source of cruel mockery and speculation on this blog for decades now, but I think that the rate of these mistakes has dropped dramatically as the web has become the primary delivery system for these strips. Still, the possibility always lurks in the background, and can lead to situations like this, where the reader is left unsure whether they’re looking at a mistake or not. What I think is happening here is that this seagull is supposed to be shitting all over this guy’s head, but the colorist recoiled in disgust and instead used red to imply that the bird’s claws had torn the man’s scalp open and he was bleeding everywhere. Both are distasteful, and it’s interesting to think of which is “better”. I vote for shit myself because I’m a baby about pain. Anyway, I guess it’s a joke about a hat?

Family Circus, 7/10/24

Speaking of being a baby about pain, I’m a big softie and whenever I see a friendly, outgoing animal or a happy toddler, I often think about how they must live a good life where they’re loved and well treated. This strip takes that idea to the extreme: only someone who has never experienced pain at all could possibly propose such a horrifying idea in such a casual manner. Good for Jeffy now, but also: someday he’ll see that he’s about to step on a nail, and he’ll just not try to avoid it, because he won’t know why he should. “Now I’ll never lose my shoes again!” he’ll think, the moment before his fool’s paradise of a life dissolves forever.

Mark Trail, 7/10/24

Cherry, for the last time, just because Mark has a little stubble now, that does not make him a bear, plus you are heterosexuals, this is cultural appropriation