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Blondie, 3/14/24

Dagwood Bumstead’s inhumanly vast appetite is so well known that it obscures one of his other unnatural qualities — namely, his ability to nap anywhere, at any time. As a middle-aged man like Dagwood, every time I see him in his traditional couch-sleeping position I think about how I personally wouldn’t be comfortable with my knees bent up like that for more than few minutes, let alone the hours we’re supposed understand he spends snoozing. Normally he’s in that position because his couch is too short for him to stretch out, so it actually really bothers me that his imagination can’t summon up a couch long enough to fit him, Beetle, and Garfield alike, even thought I know the reason why (the reason is clip art). Thankfully, this base level of annoyance is stopping me from trying mentally rotate Beetle into a position that would demonstrate how very much not the same size he and Dagwood are.

Hagar the Horrible, 3/14/24

Look at the bear’s face! It’s not “dancing” at all. Any bear-themed entertainment aimed at an audience of bloodthirsty Vikings is absolutely going to end with the bear eviscerating its poor “dance partner,” just like the “dancing school” Hagar attended was actually the Viking war band that plundered half of Europe, where he learned his skills in the “dance” of combat before killing his chieftain and taking his place.

Pardon My Planet, 3/14/24

I guess I can imagine that some people who showed up to an advertised “slugfest” would be disappointed if the fighters were not ordinary human beings, but rather freakish ten-foot-long slug-beasts of a kind unknown to science. But I think most of them would be OK with it.

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Hagar the Horrible, 2/3/24

Man, I remember when poetry was orally transmitted, when anyone could get in front of the assembly and fire off some verses that they had memorized about the contention of the gods or the glorious battles fought by our fathers or our fathers’ fathers in the south. But then, our fathers fathers’ brought back writing from the south, along with big ideas about how the King shouldn’t just be the chief of chiefs but at the top of the heap and in command of all, and now you need his permission just to be a poet, and you have to write all your poetry down on paper. This place is getting to be a drag, man. You wanna go to Greenland? I hear Greenland is still cool. Got a lot of breathing room out there.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/3/24

I applaud today’s Snuffy Smith for acknowledging that generation gap discourse is eternal and ongoing rather than doing the “kids today would rather look at the phone on their comfortable couch instead of playing kick the can in the street and getting run over by a car” bit, but I do want to recognize that Snuffy’s father was canonically in a Rip Van Winkle-style state of suspended animation for decades. He literally doesn’t understand the current generation! He’s a man out of time, unmoored from the world he thought he knew!

Hi and Lois, 2/3/24

Ha ha, it’s funny because Thirsty is going to die of carbon monoxide poisoning in that tent! Don’t worry, it will be very peaceful for him, because he’s quite drunk.

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Dick Tracy, 1/26/24

Fan fact, everybody: “the Amazing Baxter” is actually Fata, in a very clever disguise as a man, which the square, conventional minds of Neo-Chicago simply cannot see through. “He’s not like Fata!” declares Sam. “He’s a fella and she’s a lady!” Only Dick’s keen perception can see beyond the gender binary to the officer-involved shooting that he’s earned for this week.

Gasoline Alley, 1/26/24

Ha ha, Slim’s been banished from his own home due to false adultery accusations, and now he has nowhere to go and is starting to panic that he’ll freeze to death in his car! Say what you will about Gasoline Alley, but it does put out good ones occasionally, if you don’t like Slim, and I don’t.

Hagar the Horrible, 1/26/24

Hagar definitely went out and killed that moose in between panels, right? He didn’t just have the head lying around somewhere?

Marvin, 1/26/24

Jeff, you won plane tickets! I know you’ve been telling everyone that you won a vacation, but you actually just won plane tickets. That’s not the same thing at all!