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Gasoline Alley, 10/1/20

A thing I often wonder when reading Gasoline Alley is, “Who is this for?” Like, are we meant to identify with its cast of stylized mid-century rustics and diner denizens? Are meant to laugh at them? Are we meant recognize them as a faint echo of a time almost gone from living memory now? Should we be reading the footnote in today’s second panel and thinking “Ah yes, I there was once a time when a real American would refuse a latinate word like instrument and instead simply call these music-producing boxes what they are, and that time was better than the corrupt era in which we now live”? Or are we supposed to be thinking “A music box is the thing with a ballet dancer on top that you wind up, what an absolute bunch of morons these guys are, I certainly hope they get sent back to prison?”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/1/20

Meanwhile — and I say this not on the basis of any insider industry knowledge, just a gut feeling — Barney Google and Snuffy Smith feels, well, more established. More sure of itself. Who is Snuffy Smith for? Well, at some point it was for people who enjoyed the Depression-era vogue for cruel jokes about hillbillies, but those people are all dead now, so it’s actually just for people who enjoy, or at least cannot imagine a world without, Sniffy Smith. And so it gets to do what it wants. If it wants to do a strip about starving hillbilly babies turning to cannibalism, can it do it? Sure. Why not? It has nothing to prove and nothing to lose.

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Dennis the Menace, 9/21/20

OK, look, Dennis, let’s never mind that Margaret doesn’t even seem to notice you’re there and is heading off on some business of her own. Where on Earth does the phrase “the silence before the storm” comes from? It’s not the actual correct phrase and it also doesn’t repeat the phrasing Joey used in the first panel. Plus it’s not a joke! I’m not even gonna get into the “how menacing is this” shtick right now, I just gotta ask … are you OK, man?

Gasoline Alley, 9/21/20

Meanwhile, these two panels are a real roller coaster, storywise and emotionally! Truly “Ha ha!” is how a congregation would react to a clergyman telling them that today’s sermon will be short, followed by “ooh! ah!” and “wow!” when he smoothly segues into “snakes are mentioned in the bible over 20 times,” which, folks, I may not be an expert in theological oratory, but if I heard the phrase “snakes are mentioned in the bible over 20 times” at the beginning of a sermon, my first thought would not be “oh, this sermon is going to be short,” but rather “ooh! ah! this guy’s gonna tell us about all 20 biblical snake references! wow!” And, honestly, I’d be into it. Obviously we start with the serpent in the Adam and Eve story (and I’d love it he could tell us when that guy started being identified with the devil, because in Genesis he gets cursed by God into leglessness as a punishment for leading Eve astray, and it seems weird for all snakes have no legs because of something the devil did), but I do hope he spends some time on the bad-ass brass snake Moses carried around on a pole that he used to cure snakebites.

Sam and Silo, 9/21/20

Sam’s (or Silo’s? if you think I’m ever going to remember which one of these two is which unless I’m looking directly at a strip where one of them is explicitly addressed by name, you’ve got another thing coming) cat just want out in the extremely dangerous nighttime, for sex. It’s worth it to him! In fact, the possibility he might be mauled to death by a dog just makes the sexual act more intense and erotic! That’s the joke today in Sam and Silo, a comic strip published in, I assume, several family newspapers.

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Dennis the Menace, 9/10/20

Well to be honest does anybody actually read Blondie, 9 Chickweed Lane, or Judge Parker?

Judge Parker, 9/10/20

Oops, I guess somebody does! Ahem so it looks like Ronnie Huerta is headed back to L.A. without Neddy, who has rediscovered the charms of room and board on Abby’s dime in rustic Cavelton. But I’m torn. On the one hand, Ronnie was the sassy gf who called Neddy on her copious B.S. — an endless, unpleasant, and valuable public service. But on the other, she’s one of a class of characters in Judge Parker and Sally Forth who daily undermine, hijack, or derail everything the main characters say. You never really finish a conversation with her, Norton, Toni Bowen, Sally’s team at the office, or Ted Forth without them steering it off into some metanarrative, stunt, non sequitur, distraction, hallucination, or wisecrack. Look, she’s doing it right up there! It’s annoying, and it mucks up the pace, which in the case of Judge Parker is legendarily slow to begin with.

So c’mon, Ronnie! Let Neddy gush about Cavelton for a few insincere minutes before you shut her down and hug it out. It’s probably the last thing you’ll do before you flicker out of existence forever, so make it a good one! Say hi to Aria, Chad Duncan, and the Thorp kids!

Gasoline Alley, 9/10/20

Idiot rustics attempt some extremely low-stakes con, part XXVII.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/10/20

With any luck, your corpse will be Board certified!

— Uncle Lumpy