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Beetle Bailey, 10/13/18

Beetle Bailey’s Rocky, created in order to cash in on the “rock ‘n’ roll” music the kids loved so much in the ’50s, has over the years taken on a number of conflicting attributes that might be vaguely lumped together as “anti-establishment”: he’s been an anti-war protestor, a nihilist, a mutineer and assassin, a violent street tough, and an abstract impressionist, so sure, let’s make him a muckraking journalist as well, for some reason! Anyway, panel two is a good image for those of you who can only get off when thinking about an old man ashamed of his own incontinence, I guess.

Hagar the Horrible, 10/13/18

Long-distance Viking trade networks did result in cultural contacts between medieval Arabs and Scandinavians, so it’s plausible that a djinni could find itself in the The Horrible’s Norwegian shack. And djinn are canonically charismatic, so it makes sense that Helga would want to have sex with this Middle Eastern spirit being and condemn her ungrateful husband to an eternity trapped in a lamp. This all checks out!

Blondie and Marvin, 10/13/18

Say, are you a comfortable middle-aged suburbanite syndicated cartoonist looking for a venue where you can work out your irritation with, say, those showboating NBA players, or the poor? Well, good news!

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Crock, 10/10/18

Ha ha, yes, it’s funny because Crock appears to be suggesting that poor Barlow be fitted with a chicken liver, a ghastly parody of a medical procedure that would surely result in his death. But check out Orville in the final panel, who appears to be using dark magick to animate a severed hand to perform menial labor for him. Maybe he’s a man who could transform a chicken liver into an organ that could keep a human alive! Who could possibly set limits on the capabilities of this powerful wizard?

Hi and Lois, 10/10/18

Trixie is, of course, an eternal infant, trapped in comic-time amber for half a century and presumably doomed to stay there for a half century more, assuming newspaper comic strips are still around for that long (they will not). So it’s not a surprise that her fully adult mind has become all sick and twisted inside her forever soft baby skull. Yes, it’s good that her parents keep her confined behind closed doors; if she were allowed to escape, she would truly “mess up” the world with her terrible and well-earned wrath.

Hagar the Horrible, 10/10/18

I was going to make this one in my continuing series of jokes about “ha ha, Hagar recently converted to Christianity but doesn’t fully ‘get’ it,” but then I remembered … most of the history of Western civilization? Then I got real sad.

Spider-Man, 10/10/18

Oh no, Spidey and Iron Fist punched the helicopter they were dangling off of, damaging it enough to interfere with its ability to fly, probably leading to their fiery deaths! Who could’ve possibly predicted this outcome? Oh, literally anybody? OK!

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Spider-Man, 10/3/18

I know, I know, I make fun of ol’ Spider-Man a lot, but one way you know he really is a top-tier hero is that he has various powers, admittedly all based on a vaguely spider-centric theme. Like he shoots spiderwebs and he’s spider-strong and and he’s spider … sensible? You get it. Admittedly, none of his powers are helping him out in the very specific predicament he’s found himself in right now, but consider his would-be rescuer Iron Fist, whose sole power is punching. Punching with a fist … of iron, I guess. He’s gonna punch Spidey out of his problems, just you wait and see. (I haven’t watched the Iron Fist Netflix show or read any of his other comics, so if you feel like letting me know what the real scoop is, please let me implore you not to bother, I enjoy my studied ignorance, thanks.)

Hagar the Horrible, 10/3/18

I am charmed by how completely devastated Helga looks in the second panel here. We know that fancy sit-down restaurants exist in the Hagarverse, so I have to assume that the The Horribles attempted to go to one of those, but tragically miscalculated. Since Helga has always been depicted as the more civilized half of the pair, I assume she picked this place out, and is very sad to have to kill her own food, once again.

Pluggers, 10/3/18

My favorite kind of Pluggers submission comes from “Lots of pluggers everywhere” or, in this case, “Lots of pluggers coast to coast,” just in case you smug elitists thought the coasts were plugger-free. (Panama City, home of the official Pluggers P.O. Box, is located in the Florida Panhandle, which is strictly speaking on a coast, for instance.) Anyway, there are lots of pluggers who think it’s hilarious that you big-city liberals are going out and spending a whole $30 on a paper shredder when you could just spend way too much time tearing up paper by hand, letting little bits get all over the rug, and eventually lose interest and do a half-assed job and not actually make it difficult for identity thieves! Ha ha, I guess pluggers have shown all of us what’s what, again!