Post Content

Hi and Lois, 11/15/20

From the fall of 1992 to the spring of 1993, I was a freshman at Cornell University, and at Cornell — and, I assume, at many other universities, although I can only speak to my experience — Spin Doctors’ debut album, Pocket Full of Kryptonite, was absolutely inescapable, and after a few weeks I definitely wanted to escape it, though I admit that during the brief window before I came to loathe the band I did put “Two Princes” on a mix tape for a young lady I was trying, without success, to woo. Anyway, I had mostly managed to purge the music from my head until someone over at Waker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC decided to slip the phrase “pocket full of Kryptonite” into today’s strip, which made me wonder if the album title was maybe a reference to something else, but nope, it’s just a lyric from the album, so there you go: Spin Doctors content in today’s Hi and Lois. While on this journey of discovery, I did learn that that Spin Doctors’ Wikipedia article has one of my very favorite Wikipedia Things, a bar chart showing the comings and goings of various musicians in the band’s lineup over the years, from which I learned that John Popper, later of Blues Traveler, another band unavoidable in Cornell dorms in the early-to-mid ’90s, was briefly in Spin Doctors, which I found noteworthy enough to mention to my wife. Her responses were “Am I supposed to care about this” and “I cannot think of two bands I care less about,” which, I guess, is ultimately why I have a blog, because I have to tell someone this stuff. Anyway, thanks a lot for making me think about this, Hi and Lois. Thanks a lot.

Six Chix, 11/15/20

Honestly, I’m not even sure what to say about this except that I’m kind of in awe of the series of free associations that brought this … allegory? metaphor? fever dream? … into existence. I assume that after utterly defeating the dinosaurs on the court, the asteroids high fived one another, leapt far up into space, and then plummeted back down to earth, obliterating both their vanquished foes and themselves in an apocalyptic blast.

Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/15/20

Ha ha, Parson, that so-called “currency” doesn’t do you much good in a community that mostly exists as a pre-monetary economy in which social ties mediate almost all economic exchange, does it?

Post Content

Dick Tracy, 11/12/20

Ah, it appears this meteorite heist is not meant to provide an illicit space-rock as a trophy for some wealthy malcontent trawling the dark web eager for a forbidden object to show off to his friends; rather, Yeti and Daisy are just going to extract its valuable mineral content in order to cover their not inconsiderable expenses. In a way, it fits in with Yeti’s whole deal, which is that he’s a poisoner in a fallen world, where nobody likes to poison people to death anymore. I’m sure he’ll sigh wistfully as he watches the meteorite melt away, thinking of its long journey through space and the sort of wealthy supercriminal who in a better era might have enjoyed giving it a place of honor in the trophy room in his mega-yacht or undersea lair. Then he’ll shake his head, pick up his phone, and make contact with the multinational metallurgical conglomerate he’s going to sell the minerals to via a Cayman Islands shell corporation.

Hi and Lois, 11/12/20

So the joke here is “Ha ha, turns out Hi and Thirsty waxed horny within earshot of the kids,” but my favorite thing is that Hi is already wearing a dull, gobsmacked expression before we even get to this revelation. It’s like he’s still processing the idea that Chip might want to go golfing with him. “Chip? On the golf course? With me? But … the golf course is where I go to not see Chip.”

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 11/7/20

I guess the joke here is that Sarge is an ape-like brute who took Beetle’s first-panel retort as an invitation to pound him into a pulp in traditional Beetle Bailey fashion. But I’d like to imagine that in fact Sarge took Beetle to a zoo or gorilla sanctuary and threw him into an enclosure to be attacked, or perhaps released a gorilla he keeps captive for just such occasions, because he is a very literal ape-like brute.

Hi and Lois, 11/7/20

Faithful readers of this blog know that I’m extremely on board with Hi and Lois reclaiming Thirsty’s original characterization as a sad, desperate alcoholic. I’m sad that the colorists of today’s strip, apparently unaware of the comics’ rich history of using alcohol-inflamed rhinopehyma as a visual gag, spent all their red-yellow gradient efforts on the fall leaves and not on Thirsty’s cross-hatched nose. Because Hi is trash-talking his neighbor and best (only?) friend well within hearing distance, I assume that Thirsty is fully passed out in that chair.

Pluggers, 11/7/20

I am dying to know the relationship between this strip and the infamous “Rhino-Man Hocks His TV” panel, not least because that appears to be the identical model of television, which was decades out of date even when Rhino-Man hocked it back in 2006. I don’t know if we’re supposed to understand that Dog-Man is superior to Rhino-Man in fixiness, the quality most valued in a plugger after down-home smugness and sexism, or if this is in fact the exact same TV, which the guy at the pawn shop gave Dog-Man at no charge just to free up some space on his shelves.