Post Content

Mary Worth, 11/23/23

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! How will you be spending the day? Will you be enjoying a meal in the company of a bunch of other people from your apartment building that you don’t like very much, but you have agreed to spend the evening with because you were promised a particularly juicy bit of gossip to make up for the bone-dry turkey?

Gil Thorp, 11/23/23

Or will you be at home with your beloved family, along with the golf coach who’s fucking your wife?

Six Chix, 11/23/23

Trying to figure out where the action is happening in any given Six Chix is of course a fool’s errand but — are these turkeys hanging out amongst the clouds, indicating that they’re dead (presumably killed for some human’s Thanksgiving dinner) and in heaven? Truly sad that, even in Paradise, they cannot escape the justified fear that haunted them their whole brief, sad lives. Enjoy your holiday meal, everybody!

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 11/21/23

Hey, remember earlier this year, when Gil Thorp did a ripped from the headlines story about about a player who got terribly hurt during a game, only unlike the headlines, where professional athletes refused to return to play, the high school students were forced to forced to finish the game while their friend might’ve been dying? Well, looks like it’s happening again, and this time the injured student is Coach Luke’s son, still playing for Valley Tech even after his dad had to take a job working for his hated rival Gil Thorp. Why do these gruesome injuries keep happening to Valley Conference players? Probably for the same reason that the games continue after the kids are medivac’d off the field: because none of the adults involved care whether the student-athletes live or die.

Mary Worth, 11/21/23

“Did you know that this huge, beefy hunk is also a man-whore, who has impregnated at least one woman, via sex? Do with that information what you will, though if what you’re going to do with it is masturbation or dissociative fantasies during your thrice annual marital encounter with Ian, please feel free not to tell me.”

Beetle Bailey, 11/21/23

I know Beetle is using “neat” in the first panel to mean “tidy” but it’s hard for me to not read it as just “good” in general. He likes beds! He spends a lot of time in them, and has come to appreciate the ones that are especially interesting or high-quality.

Hagar the Horrible, 11/21/23

Hagar and his warriors have all suffered battle wounds during their latest raid, and their loved ones are waiting for them as they return to Norway, doing their best to nurse them back to health. That’s not a joke or anything, just a thing that’s happening in this comic strip!

Post Content

Pluggers and Hi and Lois, 11/11/23

Happy Veterans Day, everyone! Do you think the United States is on the verge an apocalyptic war for national survival that will require us to call old men back into military service in a last-ditch and almost certainly doomed effort to fight back the overwhelming force of the enemy? Probably not, right? But still, it’s fun to keep those guys on their toes by hinting that it might be necessary in syndicated newspaper comics, their favorite form of media.

Gil Thorp, 11/11/23

Speaking of grizzled war vets, Gil Thorp apparently fought in the U.S. Army Air Force against the Luftwaffe during World War II, which means that he’s some sort of ageless immortal, which in turn has a lot of implications for any number of Gil Thorp plots. Like his slo-mo ongoing divorce, for instance: sure, it’s painful, but it’s something he has to go through every few decades, before his current wife starts to notice that he looks exactly like he did the day they got married.

Blondie, 11/11/23

Dagwood’s rich parents made sure he never got drafted into World War I or any of the wars that followed it, so no, Blondie will not be acknowledging Veterans Day, thank you very much. Anyway, a big problem with this strip is that the joke is supposed to be that Dagwood is hearing people use “beef” metaphorically and it makes him hungry for an all-beef hamburger patty, but then one of the speakers on TV is named “Mr. Burgomaster,” which kind of implies he’s already watching some kind of burger-themed entertainment, which muddles things, I think. Another problem with it is that it disrespects the troops.