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Hi and Lois, 4/16/24

Lois’s book group used to be the fun kind, where she and her friends would use the vague excuse of literary pretension to get extremely wine drunk on a weeknight. But some killjoy who “wants to actually talk about the book” or “is feeling her relationship with alcohol slipping out of control” has apparently put a stop to that, so now the ladies have to take truly dire steps to entertain one another, like all sitting around in silence while listening to a voice memo of Hi awkwardly stumbling through some vaguely offensive joke Thirsty told at work, in violation of several provisions in the HR handbook.

Beetle Bailey, 4/16/24

Another way you can tell Beetle isn’t asleep is because he’s half raising his arms into the air, which I guess is supposed to represent some kind of meditative hand mudra but really looks more like he’s doing a Rodney Dangerfield-style “My wife doesn’t love me!” stand-up routine.

Mary Worth, 4/16/24

Since Wilbur has already run into Estelle, I guess his next predictably awkward predicament is running into Iris, though I feel like he sees her often enough (she invited him to her wedding!) that she doesn’t merit the look of true fear in his eyes here. Could his statuesque Colombian lover/grifter Fabiana be in town, looking for one more chance (to steal his money)? Let’s hope!

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Hi and Lois, 4/13/24

Two things you have to keep in mind when reading today’s Hi and Lois: (a) despite my many jokes about how Trixie is an eternal baby who’s been an infant for 70 years now, we have to understand that, in the world of the strip, she’s actually less than a year old, and (b) the Flagston family dog is named Dawg. Which means that at some point, possibly quite recently, these kids decided to name their baseball team after the dog, but now that there’s something new and exciting on the scene in terms of cute nonverbal family members, they’re willing to just throw out their old name and take on a new one. It makes me sick and I’m just glad Dawg’s not here to see it.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/13/24

Children have long been expected to contribute economically to their households at a pretty young age, particularly in poorer, developing societies. The real unnerving thing here is not that Jughaid’s trying to help pay his way, but the question of where, in a town whose economy is entirely based on criminality, he got the money.

Daddy Daze, 4/13/24

OK, fine, I laughed at this. See, the joke is that the Daddy Daze baby isn’t potty trained, so he doesn’t really see the point of the toilet. He can just poop whenever and wherever he wants, he doesn’t need a special piece of furniture for it! If Marvin tried to pull this off, I’d be furious, but Daddy Daze doesn’t go to the poop joke well too often so I’ll allow it.

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Gasoline Alley, 4/10/24

You know, after all these years, I still experience the joy of discovery from reading the newspaper comics. Or, well, at least sometimes I read something like today’s Gasoline Alley, sigh heavily, and then Google “gasoline alley family tree” in hopes of making sense of it, but then am just a little bit charmed when I find a graphic like this:

That comes from a page on Hobbylark dot com that also includes an annotated timeline of important events in the strip lore, such as “Wilmer admits to being a sap, a wart, and a drip, but claims the Army did a job on him!” (November 20, 1945), “Corky and Hope move into a new apartment – landlord is Pert!” (May 6, 1954), and “Melba decides to take advantage of leap year to move Rufus along towards a wedding” (July 5, 1976, and yet somehow Melba is now the mayor and still hasn’t sealed the deal). Anyway, from this documentation I have confirmed that Sheezix and Corky are brothers, and Corky runs the diner (in fact, according to that timeline, 1950 was the “year of the Diner”). And because Corky has decided to embrace the town name change, that means that the coming Gasoline Alley vs. Electric Acres civil war will literally pit brother against brother, so I guess I’m finally coming around to being interested in it.

Judge Parker, 4/10/24

“He’s going to kill your mother, April. Then he’s going to kill you! The he goes after Charlotte, your daughter! It never ends! He’ll just keep going after you or your female relatives! Your male relatives will be fine! Certainly any of your relatives who happen to be the title character in the strip are safe! But it’s the principle of the thing!”

Hi and Lois, 4/10/24

Big news, everyone! Trixie seems to have grasped the concept of the linear flow of time! Also, Hi and Lois did a strip without a joke, but I guess that’s not “big news” per se.