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Hagar the Horrible and Beetle Bailey, 10/12/20

Hope you had a good weekend, everybody! Hagar and his band of grinning Vikings are going to murder these two in their bed. Sarge, meanwhile, is going to murder Beetle with a tank, though it’s not clear if he’s going to disintegrate his body by firing an artillery shell at him at point blank range or just crush him to death under the tank treads.

Mark Trail, 10/12/20

In happier news, it’s new-look Mark Trail day one, y’all! Wow, just last week Mark was getting a big fat raise just for winning some dumb industry award he didn’t even show up to collect, but now he’s off in the woods handling snakes and desperately trying to come up with some viral TikTok content that the kids can relate to. Sad!

Gil Thorp, 10/12/20

Oh hell yeah it’s another Wing-T storyline!!!! You might remember way back in 2007 when one of the shittiest Milford football teams in living memory sort of threw in the towel halfway threw the season and spent a lot of time practicing the Wing-T, an old-timey trickeration play, in total secrecy, to prepare to unleash it at just the right moment. They did, eventually, and it turned out to be boring and confusing, but whatever, this isn’t your father’s Wing-T they’re practicing now, it’s the Delaware Wing-T, which means, uh, there’s no taxes on it or something? More on this story as it develops.

Pluggers, 10/12/20

Gotta say, I’ve been reading Pluggers for more than 15 years and never once in all that time did it occur to me to think about whether the plugger chicken-lady had scaly orange chicken legs under her pants or if she was just basically a humanoid with a chicken head and covered with feathers. But now? Now that I know the answer? I’m going to think about it every God-damned day for the rest of my life.

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Gil Thorp, 10/9/20

The current football plot mostly focuses on the most classic form of football plot known to science: a quarterback controversy! Who will be Milford’s starting quarterback this year: Terry Rapson, or, uh, the other guy, whose name I forget? This would be a much more interesting storyline if either Terry or the other guy were interesting or if I could tell them apart, but things may be looking up, because Terry was ordered by Coach Thorp to run out the clock at the end of the last game but decided to throw some touchdowns instead, and now they’re locked in a battle of wills during which Gil plans to break Terry in mind, body, and soul. But Terry’s resisting! Keep it up, Terry, Gil will definitely get bored of this soon enough.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/9/20

Oh, man, remember when we were teased with the idea that something interesting might happen in this strip but then it was all resolved off-panel? Well, it seems we are actually being allowed to see someone try to do something interesting, though they were immediately stopped before anything interesting actually happened. I’m not sure what’s funnier: that Nancy’s parents have given up on trying to stop her COVID-spreading ways themselves and have just sent out an APB to all the local disreputable hotels, or that the photo they sent is of her trademark sneer. I certainly hope they have a big framed version of that picture hanging over the fireplace!

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/5/20

Hey, remember beloved (?) Funkyverse supporting character Adeela, an Iraqi (?) immigrant who forged an unlikely bond with Wally because they both have PTSD from the same (?) war? Welp, she’s getting deported now, because of a clerical error! Please, my sides just stopped aching from the time you burned down half of Los Angeles, you’ve got to give me some time to relax before you bring this level of laffs back to the newspaper.

Gil Thorp, 10/5/20

I’m woefully underqualified to judge the sports action in Gil Thorp, but … Curtis Charles and his Ballard opponent aren’t so much fighting for position as a potential touchdown pass is heaved their way as just kind of standing there and thinking “Huh, he threw the ball, whaddya know,” right? This really fits in with my firmly held belief that all the games within the Thorpiverse are in fact pretty boring to watch.

Dennis the Menace, 10/5/20

I’m really enjoying how much room Henry and Alice are putting between Dennis and themselves here. “This kid? The one who doesn’t seem to know even the basics of the religion we supposedly profess? Never seen him before, padre.”

The Lockhorns, 10/5/20

I say this with all due respect to The Lockhorns: you may be a longstanding comics page institution, but you do not occupy the same place in the comics world as Garfield and definitely do not have the resources necessary to survive a legal battle with Paws, Inc. I beg you to step back from this before it’s too late.