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Beetle Bailey, 2/23/23

The joke here is clearly that Otto is imitating Beetle’s typical slothfulness, but wouldn’t it be funny if this were a lead-in to Sarge murdering Beetle, and this is the last thing the title character to this long running comic strip ever sees? Well, “funny” may not be quite the right word, unless you’re like me and have been reading this strip every day for years, waiting desperately for something, anything, to happen in it.

Hagar the Horrible, 2/23/23

Say what you will about Hagar the Horrible, but unlike many gag-a-day strips its team of gag writers works hard to keep track of the lore. Like, Hagar is canonically illiterate, which is why they’re careful to have him say “I was told” in the final panel. Anyway, what do you think the book is? Based on that description and the historical setting, I’m guessing it’s the Bible, in the form of a lovingly illuminated manuscript plundered from an Irish monastery that Hagar and his warriors burned to the ground.

Mary Worth, 2/23/23

“I want to be friends with him … but from a distance! Why can’t he understand that the most precious form of friendship is the kind where you’re never in the same room at the same time, and also you don’t like each other?”

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Mary Worth, 2/16/23

Look, I’m not going to say I’m done with Wilbur, like Estelle and Iris justifiably are, but I am a little sick of his shit, and feel like Mary Worth readers could use a rest from him for a while. That said, I do think today’s strip is a kind of fun meta-commentary, like “Oh, did you you think you had finally achieved inner peace, NOPE, SORRY WILBUR”

Hagar the Horrible, 2/16/23

We all remember the Ice Bucket Challenge … now get ready for the Ice Bucket Fetish!

Judge Parker, 2/16/23

So wait, you’re telling me that Cavelton had an oxy ring run by drug dealers, and another one run by the cops, and another one run by a judge? Sure explains why everyone has been so loopy around here.

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Blondie, 12/20/22

I’m reasonably sure that we’ve never seen Dagwood and his “fishing buddy” Herb ever actually go fishing? Maybe there was talk of fishing gear borrowed and never returned, or some bit set up by a powerboat (not a rowboat) parked in Herb’s driveway? This makes me suspect that today’s strip was built backwards from a punchline about “what if a Christmas fruitcake was an anchor???? because it’s so hard and dense, get it????”, which itself is a common misunderstanding of fruitcake’s whole deal (fruitcakes are, if done right, actually very moist) that has arisen since nobody eats fruitcakes anymore and we only know about them from old jokes about bad ones. Anyway, mostly what I’m interested in here is that the salesman at this store, which I assume is a chain that caters to suburbanites like Dagwood who very occasionally go fishing, has been forced to put on a ridiculous get-up and even grow a chinbeard just to provide a “full nautical experience” for customers. Probably he had to sit through a whole training from corporate about how if you don’t say “Ahoy matey!” to everyone who walks in the door, with enthusiasm, you’ll get written up by your shift supervisor.

Hagar the Horrible, 12/20/22

Based on everyone’s sour expressions here, I guess the joke here is that Hagar is obviously guilty, but that his lawyer has discovered some technical loophole to free him that the judge and jury are bound to obey, even though they clearly don’t like it. This being medieval Norway, the loophole is probably that, despite a recent move towards a written legal system where courts attempt to ascertain the facts of a case and hand down judgements based on an objective moral code, it’s still technically legal to resolve disputes via trial by combat, and Hagar’s accuser is currently lying in a bloody, dismembered heap on the floor.