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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/19/19

Lots of today’s comics are doing special strips for Red Nose Day, but I’m only going mention one because otherwise it’d get pretty repetitive, and that one is going to be Snuffy Smith, because the point of Red Nose Day is to raise money to combat childhood poverty and there are few clearer examples in the comics of children living in poverty than the (literally, desperately) poor children of Hootin’ Holler.

Beetle Bailey, 5/19/19

You have to respect how acutely aware Miss Buxley is of the progress of General Haltrack’s sundowning: she knows that his “I’ve been in the army [X] years” diatribe is good for a solid 10 minutes where she won’t have to do anything but stand there and nod politely, and she’s going get it out of him even if she has to wave the calendar in his fact to start it. You also have to respect the comics colorist who made Halftrack a white-haired old man in the first flashback panel, then realized in the next panel that he was supposed to be young, but didn’t bother going back to fix their earlier mistake.

Family Circus, 5/19/19

Sure, this is a cute comic about how Sam the dog fetches Big Daddy Keane’s slippers and greets Grandma at the door and, uh, takes care of PJ when all the adults are ignoring him or gone altogether, but let’s not neglect Billy’s look of creeping panic in the center panel here. He feels like he has to denigrate Sam’s skills because he’s not good at anything and he’s never going be good at anything, and he knows it.

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Dick Tracy, 5/18/19

It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the new storyline of Dick Tracy once again involves dipping back into the comics nostalgia well, with Little Orphan Annie being dragged back from comics purgatory to dance for our throwback amusement. Why not Brenda Starr, another dormant property who is owned, like Annie and Dick Tracy, by Tribune Content Agency, and who’s also a reporter, which would let us get into all sorts of First Amendment issues with the not-real-into-civil-liberties police force of Neo-Chicago? But, no, I guess we’re gonna see Little Orphan Annie trying to integrate her way into Honeymoon’s social circle, hanging out with notorious crime family relative “Ugly” Crystal and … Kandikane Lane, who is, I have always assumed, an adult? And old enough that it’s just “off-putting” and not “creepy and legally actionable” that she’s partners with a man old enough to be an old-timey movie star? Anyway, more on all this as developments warrant, which will hopefully be never.

Family Circus, 5/18/19

Note that Billy here is in fact the guy with the ball. There can be only one explanation of why he’s still alive: Billy killed all those other kids as they tried to kill him. Billy is a smiling, triumphant murderer, walking back into his home with blood on his hands but no guilt in his heart.

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Family Circus, 5/17/19

God, I honestly love Big Daddy Keane’s whole deal here. He looks beaten down by life, his facial expression numb and his tie just a little loose and disheveled, and mostly what he wants to do is take that spoon he’s holding delicately in his big, meaty mitt and just go to town on that enormous bowl of chocolate pudding. Look at all that pudding! That’s like a soup bowl’s worth of pudding! And it’s his due, as the family breadwinner. Jeffy sticking his grubby face into his peripheral vision is just pissing him off. Let the man eat his pudding in peace, Jeffy.

Six Chix, 5/17/19

I also enjoy today’s Six Chix, because based on the dialogue you’d expect the speaker to be sort of heavy-lidded and languorous, just dully shoving cookie after cookie into her mouth and barely tasting them, but in fact she’s staring at a half-eaten cookie wide-eyed with anxiety, as if she can’t fully articulate what mania is causing her to keep eating them. Her boyfriend is asleep, or maybe dead.

Mark Trail, 5/17/19

“Boy, am I glad we found Skull Mountain!” is the sort of thing a guy says, ironically, right before he gets killed by a bunch of spooky, evil skeletons.