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Mary Worth, 10/25/22

Good (?) news, everybody: Zak didn’t fall to his death mid-selfie, or at least he hasn’t yet! No, he’s grabbed onto a cliffside branch, Sgt. Snorkel style, and now needs Iris to drag him to safety. There was a bit of dialogue in a strip last week in which Iris said she can easily handle this hike due to the “strength training” she’s been doing; I assume that, despite her current protests, she will eventually be able to rescue Zak, finding her power in an adrenaline-fueled burst like the stories you hear about mothers lifting up cars to save their children, which really fits in with the nature of their relationship.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/25/22

When Summer announced her plan to follow in her father’s footsteps and write a book, a lot of my commenters speculated that she would be following in her father’s footsteps and writing a book about her mother, Les’s dead wife Lisa. But, nope! Turns out she’s going to be writing about all the alive losers in her dumb loser town, which frankly seems like a much, much worse idea.

Hi and Lois, 10/25/22

I truly enjoy the fact that in panel one Lois and Irma are genuinely shocked by whorish athleisure fashions of the sort that used to be impossible in polite society but are now on sale at every department store, but in panel two they’ve managed to mediate their discomfort through an ironic quip to find their equilibrium. Do I enjoy the fact that this attitude has been grafted onto women who canonically cannot be past their early 40s, women who have never worn a girdle in their lives and whose mothers probably never did either? Well, no, but that is just a professional hazard of writing a blog about newspaper comics strips, where the assumed age of your audience is roughly 75.

Gasoline Alley, 10/25/22

Speaking of which, it is absolutely shocking to me that any character in Gasoline Alley is supposed to have seen a film made as recently as 2016. This strip is going to cause riots in the streets!

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Dustin, 10/23/22

The thing about Dustin is that it was originally sold in 2010 as a look at Boomer-Millennial tensions, but also the Boomer dad is clearly the viewpoint character so it was mostly about how Millennials annoyed him. Annoying as Millennials are, however, twelve years is a long time to go to that well, and so now the strip is at least 25% “random non-Millennial things the viewpoint character is annoyed by” by volume. And the punchline? The punchline, my friend, is the viewpoint character being as insufferable as possible about it. That’s the funny pages!

Mary Worth, 10/23/22

At least Mary Worth knows what it takes to make America laugh again: beloved millionaire himbo Zak falling to his death in front of his horrified not-fiancée. Publius Syrus is right, kids: learn caution from Iris’s misfortune, and do not get emotionally attached to a self-confident moron like Zak and then hike to a dramatic cliffside vista.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/23/22

Look, Summer, take it from me, someone who has both gone to grad school and written a book: those are not your only two choices in life, and just about all the other ones are going to frankly be a lot better for your financial and emotional well-being.

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/19/22

So, I guess several years ago Susan Smith thought about killing herself, but she was saved by the fortunate arrival of Ed Crankshaft, who revealed that he too in a moment of great personal darkness contemplated taking his own life. Susan will now move forward powered by the revelation that Ed is about to bestow upon her that’s defined his life for the past 50+ years: that you can take that overwhelming self-loathing and turn it outwards, and that you can make your own misery bearable by making literally every person you interact with miserable as well.

Beetle Bailey, 10/19/22

Ha ha, it’s funny because Miss Buxley is subject to endless sexual harassment at the workplace that the army refuses to do anything to stop, so she’s resorting to desperate measures!

Dennis the Menace, 10/19/22

Look, man, your dad put on a tuxedo for this bullshit, so what if he had to psych himself up in the bathroom for a little bit before you left, cut him some slack