Post Content

Gasoline Alley, 7/23/22

Despite feeling obliged to read Gasoline Alley every day, I often fail to retain the details of its sprawling cast and their various problems, because honestly, why do that with my precious brain space when I could be doing literally anything else with it, but it’s slowly been dawning on me that the “Jimmy” who we recently saw ruining his sister’s sex life is the same kid who got a ride on a real live steam locomotive because he was dying of some unspecified terminal illness all the way back in 2014. I’m not sure if they somehow cured him in the interim and I just forgot or if the kid suffers from “Walt Syndrome,” a rare condition unique to the Alleyverse where a character lingers at the ege of death indefinitely without ever actually dying, but clearly Jimmy’s sister’s paramour is done with waiting. That’s why he’s turning to his grandfather Slim, who once got mad about some local teens playing basketball so he hired a guy to murder them by dropping a meteorite on them out of a helicopter. Slim knows from killing minors in elaborate space-themed “accidents,” in other words, and this rocketship built much faster than NASA ever could, with fewer safety features than NASA would ever be allowed to include, will do nicely.

Dick Tracy, 7/23/22

So whey would some faction of the now Earthbound race of Moon People want to turn their monstrous powers against Earth’s unsuspecting governments? Well, it turns out their Moon youth are being corrupted by anime. How else do you expect any self-respecting civilization to respond?

Hi and Lois, 7/23/22

Honestly respect how absolutely devastated Hi is by this. He’s been hanging on by a thread for a while now, but at least he thought that his family respected his grilling prowess. Now even that’s been taken from him, and there’s nothing left.

Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 7/6/22

Man, wouldn’t it be cool if Funky Winkerbean made an abrupt change in its narrative style and suddenly became a retro-cyberpunk strip (set in the original 1980s heyday of cyberpunk, even) where Harry Dinkle used his computer hacking prowess to gain authority over Westview High without his techno-ignorant colleagues even noticing? It wouldn’t even have to be a permanent abrupt change. Just for one storyline would be a relief from the endless puns. Computers in the ’80s couldn’t make puns, right? That was beyond their capabilities?

Dustin, 7/6/22

I’ve made some jokes about how the unstoppable passage of time has shifted Dustin’s core “Boomer vs. Millennial” concept to a significantly less bankable “elder Gen X vs. young Millennial/first-wave Zoomer” scenario, but I think we can agree that no matter what the actual ages of the people in the strip are, the main engine of the whole thing is Boomer dude condescension. How else do you explain today’s punchline at the expense of Abba, a band that was always pretty beloved and has undergone a critical appraisal of late? “Ha ha, Abba,” says the strip’s viewpoint character, about one of the best-selling music acts of all time, which spawned a wildly popular stage musical and film series, “I think we can safely do a punchline predicated on notion that we all agree that they suck!”

Mark Trail, 7/6/22

Look, it’s come to our attention that Mark Trail’s core audience may be tired of long storylines about how cryptocurrency is bad or whatever. So, we’re going back to the core story topics that have made this strip great: animals, and their gross rashes. Hope you enjoy the close-up drawings of weeping sores, freaks!

Gasoline Alley, 7/6/22

Gasoline Alley: the long-running continuity strip that’s in touch with everyday real Americans, their lives, and their problems. Also, it features a talking bird who strictly enforces sexual morality. It’s a real nightmare place!

Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/5/22

Say, were you feeling a little on edge rolling into our four-day week? Need your nerves soothed? Well, remember how beloved (?) ancillary Rex Morgan character Andrzej was about to die of a heart attack? Turns out he just had heartburn. False alarm! Ha ha! But it’s a false alarm that Rex can definitely still bill Medicare for, so all’s well that ends well.

Gil Thorp, 7/5/22

A fun aspect of the baseball season Gil Thorp plot is it’s been all about comically blind Gregg Hamm and his media circus and we only hear in passing about how the other pitchers on the team are also doing great. Gregg (and these other, less interesting pitchers) got the team into the playdowns this year but, just in case that’s too much excitement for you: Gregg blew it and they lost in the first round. Whew! One less thing to worry about there!

Gasoline Alley, 7/5/22

I know I’m going against theme here but it may excite you to learn that some characters in Gasoline Alley are going to have some post-fireworks sex tonight. One of them is named “Boog.” Does that excite you? Or disgust you? Is disgust a kind of negative excitement? Much to think about.

Dennis the Menace, 7/5/22

Damn, Dennis, one minute you’re humiliating your dad in front of tough guys by pointing out he’s insufficiently masculine, and the next you’re humiliating him while he’s trying to fit into a masculine milieu by pointing out traditional masculinity’s violent, toxic underpinnings. It’s almost like you don’t care one way another about society’s construction of gender roles and are willing to say whatever will most efficiently ruin your father’s attempts to make friends, which is truly the most nihilistically menacing move of all.

Mary Worth, 7/5/22

Wait, would Jess “like to see more” of Jared as a romantic interest … or as a medical caregiver? Wait, it’s both, you say? That seems extremely healthy all around. Please proceed!