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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/29/23

Believe me, if there’s one bit of empathy doing this blog for multiple decades has granted me, it’s the understanding that it’s actually really a grind to come up with a new joke every day indefinitely, so I don’t blame comics writers for latching onto whatever they can as a a prompt. Blondie in particular loves to use fake holidays made up for marketing purposes to hang their jokes on, and that’s what I assumed was going on here, but a little Googling shows that “Contrarian Day” simply is not a thing — it mostly seems to occur in the phrase “contrarian day trader,” which is a sort of person who, if some very sad Reddit threads are any indication, frequently loses a lot of money. Anyway, you’d think he could’ve just said “Opposite Day?” That isn’t any kind of official holiday either, but at least it’s been sanctified by numerous cruel teens, right after they tell you that your clothes look nice.

Dennis the Menace, 9/29/23

What’s the menace here? That Dennis is revealing to his mother that his father has a comely assistant? That Dennis is accusing his father of being bad at his job and needing help? Neither: it’s that his father has violated their community’s WASP code and hired [shudder] an Italian.

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Hi and Lois, 9/2/23

If you want a glimpse of how in mid-century America, syndicated newspaper cartooning used to be your ticket to a comfortable life, consider the central position the great suburban participatory leisure sports of golf and tennis hold in our legacy strips! It’s a different time now, but these strips can still teach us a lot about the folkways of suburban Connecticut and similar communities, and if I’m reading today’s Hi and Lois right, those places are on the verge of civil war. Hi thinks he can just ride this one out on the golf course, but there will come a time, and soon, where he’ll have to take a side.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/2/23

Oh ho, it looks like Rene, aka “Professor Mirakle,” is back to tie up some loose ends, possibly by murdering his erstwhile disciple Mud! Ha ha, everyone will be real sorry they didn’t accept his apologies, once they find his bullet-ridden corpse in this hotel room three days from now! Honestly, though, it seems much more likely that Rene is just trying to get a cut of the money from Mud’s apparently quite lucrative Li’l Fergus character and the songs he co-wrote and/or inspired through fake guru powers. It would be funny to see an attempted murderer make use of the legal system to enforce his intellectual property claims, but honestly, it’s not like he hasn’t done it before.

Between Friends, 9/2/23

Sorry to this lady who is being abandoned by all her friends and family, but I will never get over the phrase “We live in a global world.” Do we? Is it a global world we live in? Is it really? Is that why you can use a globe to depict the world with such uncanny accuracy?

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Judge Parker, 8/25/23

Look, Sophie, your parents might have accidentally kinda sorta agreed, under a certain amount of duress, to assassinate somebody, OK? So we’re going to need a lot more of the classic “I can dispassionately analyze data and am deeply interested in wars and the surreptitious ways states and state-like organizations enact violence to further their interests” Sophie and a lot less of this modern-day “Oh, boo hoo, I’m capable of forming emotional attachments and I worry about the people in my life” Sophie from here on in.

Beetle Bailey, 8/25/23

Big news! They’re finally sending Beetle into combat! It’s not going to go great, I think everyone pretty much knows in advance.