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Mary Worth, 10/12/24

God, I hope Jimmy is with Estelle in spirit. I hope he’s been following her around for her whole dating journey, and I hope that when she got to Wilbur he recoiled in disgust. He died while on the job so I assume he still has all his cop stuff with him as a ghost, and I hope that every time Estelle and Wilbur began to have sex he reached his ghost hand for his ghost baton, only to realize that as a mere shade he could never break open the man’s bald head with it, so what’s the point. Instead he just has to sit (float?) there and watch. His spectral but furious presence would explain a lot of the bad vibes around that relationship.

Hi and Lois, 10/12/24

I love that the first panel is a bedtime story and the second is happening at least a day later, which meant that the twins have had to time to discuss this. “He’s talking about Mr. Thurston, right?” they presumably asked each other after Hi shut the door. “He’s the tortoise in this situation?” I also like the fact that leaves are beginning to pile up on Thirsty’s inert form. He’s dead, kids! He’s been dead for hours!

Hagar the Horrible, 10/12/24

Hey, guys, want to read a Hagar the Horrible where some people walk into Hagar and Helga’s house and just start fucking? Well, uh, here you go. Happy weekend, everybody!

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Dennis the Menace, 9/24/24

Despite being a resident of California for more than a decade, I’m not a woo-woo person who talks about a situation’s “energy” much, but the closest I get is when I talk about doing standup comedy. The great and terrible thing about performing comedy live is that you can absolutely tell, in an immediate and visceral way, whether people are having a good time: a polite laugh is immediately obvious in a way that polite applause is not. And when you bomb on stage, it is a terrible and physical sensation: the term “flop sweat” is, for me at least, not a metaphor. Anyway, this is all to say that Dennis is very much bombing here; the guys down at the hardware store have zero patience for his bullshit little jokes, but it’s also clear that he’s blissfully unaware of this. Having no radar for how your performance is landing with an audience is almost certainly a type of sociopathy, and demonstrates what a true menace this young man is.

Hi and Lois, 9/24/24

Really love Lois’s gobsmacked expression in panel one here. “Holy SHIT! You bought bungee cords? You exchanged money for bungee cords? You got cords that consist of an elastic strand core covered by woven polypropylene? And you’re going to use it to secure the garbage can lids? Our garbage can lids? The lids to the cans where we put all our garbage? With fucking bungee cords? I never thought I’d live to see the day. May such wonders never cease.”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/20/24

Oh no! In this rustic retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk, Jughaid traded Ol’ Bessie for a handful of beans. The beanstalks grew to the sky in the traditional manner, but there were no gold coins, eggs, or magic harps on offer up there. Deprived of essential amino acids from Bessie’s milk, the Smifs will now die, and Barney Google will at last reclaim his strip.

Hi and Lois, 9/20/24

Chip Flagston, like Alexander Bumstead, is an anti-Dustin, attracting pretty girls without the slightest effort. But in a strip with 1950’s-era family structure, work environment, social mores, and frankly jokes, how does anything here really qualify as “retro”?

Beetle Bailey, 9/20/24

In an vulnerable moment, Sgt. Orville Snorkle is at last ready to let the sun shine into the black pit of shame and anguish that drove him to a half century of verbal abuse, savage beatings, and arbitrary punishment of his subordinate. Beetle is having none of it: this may not be the life he chose, but it’s the one he’s got and he’s not going to change it now. “Things are just fine, Sarge, do you hear me? Fine!

Judge Parker, 9/20/24

Ronnie, you’re the sensible, grounded one, remember? And yet here you are confiding in Neddy Spencer about a self-centered emotionally needy person who is not Neddy Spencer? Sure, you can always talk to her, but God help you trying to get her to listen.

Marvin, 9/20/24

Marvin‘s Jeff Miller gamely steps into Ed Crankshaft’s role now that Ed’s strip is off fighting 1950’s-era censorship or something. Got to admire how deftly he blends Crankshaft‘s negligent arson into Marvin‘s central theme, filth.

Just a reminder that there’s no Comment of the Week on my watch, so 2+2=7’s comment will ride up there for another week or until the math checks out, whichever comes first.

—Uncle Lumpy