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Gearhead Gertie, 3/21/24

Gearhead Gertie is another new strip I’ve been reading. It’s about Gertie, an old lady who’s monomaniacally hyperfocused on NASCAR and auto racing to the extent that she’s alienated her friends and family. “But Josh,” you’re probably saying, “As a coastal elitist, how am I supposed to appreciate all the jokes about the minutiae of NASCAR, a sport I definitely don’t follow?” Well, good news: each strip gives you all the information you need to appreciate the punchline. For instance, you might not understand why Gertie would call up some guy and ask for his glove because she wants an aerodynamic advantage in traffic, but fortunately, you can quickly see that said guy is named Logano (because his chair is labeled with his name) and that he recently used his webbed gloved to gain an aerodynamic advantage (because he appears to have just moments ago been reading about himself in the newspaper), presumably (you can be pretty sure from the context, which is a comic strip about auto racing) in an auto race of some kind. This saves you the trouble of reading the “Controversy” section of Logano’s Wikipedia article, though you might still want to do some research to learn, say, what his first name is (I myself did not bother).

Gil Thorp, 3/21/24

Gil’s coaching stylings are always a great way to track his mood swings. Now that he’s gotten his groove back, sexually, we’re going to be seeing more of “fun Gil,” and you know what that means: zany trickeration plays! I certainly hope the Milford marching band has “Yakety Sax” ready to go for situations like this.

Mary Worth, 3/21/24

The current Rex Morgan, M.D., storyline is about how old people shouldn’t be too proud to use mobility aids, and that’s what said old people need to hear — but is it what they want to hear? Wouldn’t they rather hear that at some point you might need a cane that you give a goofy nickname to, in order to mask your anger at being betrayed by your own body when in your mind you’re still young and vital, but eventually you’ll get a new artist who makes you look 15 years younger and/or you’ll realize that you’re a doctor who can prescribe yourself the good stuff so you don’t feel any pain or really anything at all anymore, and then your can just laugh off a joke about jogging and not seethe with resentment over it? Sounds a lot more inspiring, doesn’t it? A lot more fun!

Hagar the Horrible, 3/21/24

A fun fact is that, at the first-ever Bayreuth Festival in 1876, costume designer Carl Emil Doepler put horned helmets on the Germanic folklore characters in a production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, and that created largely false stereotypes of both “what Vikings wore” and “what opera singers wear on stage” that has lasted nearly 150 years. I just think it’s neat to see both tropes come together like this.

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Hagar the Horrible, 3/16/24

That’s Hagar’s mother-in-law as the presiding judge up there, by the way, and really the only way this strip would make sense or be funny to you at all is if you knew that, and also knew that she hated him, and that represents … well, I guess I don’t know how many “casual” comics readers are left, but I’m going to go ahead and say it represents a relatively small portion of potential readers. But whatever! I got the reference! I am for better or worse the intended audience of this strip and I have to make peace with that. Anyway, look how happy Hagar’s wife and children are about his impending legal dilemma? He must have done something truly monstrous, this time.

Dennis the Menace, 3/16/24

What makes this one actually, genuinely creepy is that Dennis is not just using a hammer to blindly smash; no, he recognizes that a tool can be used in many ways, to probe for weakness, to find the seams, to wreak destruction in a dozen ways, both subtle and blatant. Seems menacing! Seems real menacing if you ask me!

The Phantom, 3/16/24

The Death Of The Phantom lasted seven years, and the Phantom Had A Weird Dream Last Night lasted about a month; I can’t imagine we’re going to be able to get more than week out of This Guy Just Wants Dick Around On His Phone And Drink A Little, Why Won’t The Phantom Just Leave Him Alone.

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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.