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Mary Worth, 10/1/21

“Ah, mes amis! I realize I have not been keeping you up to date about my adventures with Weelbur. Je suis désolé! You see, what happened is, he has taken me out of his terrible apartment and unclipped me from the leash, and then I said au revoir forever! I shall ‘peace out,’ as you Americans say!”

Hi and Lois, 10/1/21

You know, one of my main philosophical beefs with religions that propose an afterlife of eternal rewards and/or punishments is the disproportionality of it all. Like, what could we possibly do in our finite life on Earth that would merit an eternity in heaven, or hell? Your soul in either place could exist for a billion years, so that your entire mortal life would basically be a long-forgotten blink of an eye, and that still would only be an infinitesimal fraction of what you have ahead of you. Can you imagine an angry Dawg confronting a baffled God, demanding to know why he only got 12 or so years on Earth, when soon everyone he ever loved would be joining him in heaven, and they’ll be happy together forever, as transcendent beings. Unless … the Flagstons are going to hell? They’re bad people, they’re going to hell, and Dawg, who lives with them and knows them intimately, is well aware that his few years on this plane are the only ones he’ll ever spend with them, as they’ll all be tortured for all eternity, for their sins? I realize this has gotten pretty heavy, but if Hi and Lois didn’t want me going down this road, it probably shouldn’t have done a comic where a little girl and a dog contemplate mortality.

Dustin, 10/1/21

The thing I appreciate about today’s Dustin is that Dustin’s dad is still wearing his suit, which means that he spent his evening commute seething in a white-hot rage, confident that when got home he would find that Dustin had once again failed to get a job or do anything productive, and worked himself up into a frenzy so intense that he had to find his no-good son and yell at him immediately upon arriving at the house, without even pausing to take off his tie. It’s funny because his whole life is nothing but a series of disappointments!

Blondie, 10/1/21

Having complimented Blondie’s punchline yesterday, I now feel like I have credibility to point out that today’s absolutely sucks ass. Establishing a whole German backstory for Lou (“Ludwig,” I guess?) just to deliver a gag about an oompah band playing a song not associated with oompah music and also see Dagwood get a pile of goo to eat, which despite his ravenous appetite seems very much not his bag? Terrible, terrible all around. Sad to see the strip blow its entire week’s supply of humor in a single day.

Dennis the Menace, 10/1/21

“I’m sure he’d like to. But he can’t! He can’t communicate with anyone! He’s screaming endlessly, in his own mind!” Menace level: very high.

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Dustin, 9/21/22

A thing about doing a comic strip every day for years and years is that keeping up with whatever “high concept” you used to sell the thing in the first place gets exhausting, so eventually you just start having characters say whatever jokes you or your gag writers can come up with or have maybe heard from someone else, ignoring more and more frequently the fact that they’re birds or whatever. Dustin’s been around for more than a decade now, so hopefully we’re getting closer and closer to the blessed moment where it stops being a Millennial vs. Boomer battle and just features its various generic characters driving around and reciting forwarded email jokes to one another.

Gasoline Alley, 9/21/22

Wow, it’s really sad that sexually aggressive frog-demons go unpunished in this strip, while we’re treated to images of innocent trees screaming in agony as they burn to death!

Gil Thorp, 9/21/22

Oh snap! Heather Burns is in her first week on the job as Marjie Ducey’s replacement and she’s already shaking up the staid Milford Star’s ways by live-tweeting the game! This would be a real threat to Marty Moon’s radio show if he still had a radio show, but I’m pretty sure he’s just up there in a peach crate, yelling into a headset that isn’t connected to anything.

Hi and Lois, 9/21/22

Wait, who the hell was Thirsty texting? His only friend is Hi and he hates his wife, so I don’t … ohhhh, he was in the bathroom with his phone “texting,” got it.

Mary Worth, 9/21/21

No, Wilbur! This woman works with dogs all day, so you can’t use dogs to flirt with her! Plus you don’t even have a dog yet! You’re swinging into action too soon! Bad Wilbur! Bad! [whacks Wilbur’s nose with a rolled-up newspaper]

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Hi and Lois, 9/17/21

Do teen boys still, in the year 2021, lie around their bedrooms, decorated with Stones and Led Zep posters, and talk about how bands today suck? I mean, they did when I was a teen in the ’90s, which was also decades after those bands had been relevant, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t now, but I admit that I don’t have any personal insight into the subject. I certainly hope little brothers of teen boys still lurk in the hallway outside their rooms, ready to strut in sassily with a perfect cutting sitcom-quality bon mot, because otherwise I will despair over the direction of today’s youth.

Family Circus, 9/17/21

Sure, you would think Big Daddy Keane would take this opportunity to unceremoniously plop his son on the other side of the fence and then power-walk away from his family forever, but I don’t think the desire to do that iss the emotion being conveyed by his facial expression here. It’s more a look of pure panic, as if he’d do anything to stop whatever sort of blubbering, weeping noise Jeffy is making, which should give all of us pause about whatever sort of blubbering, weeping noise Jeffy is capable of making.

Pardon My Planet, 9/17/21

I don’t really talk about Pardon My Planet very much, but on a day where one of its interchangeable characters spins an erotic description of a very fuckable armadillo, could I really ignore it? I mean, I probably could, most days, but the comics fodder is a little thin today. I just wrung a paragraph out of Jeffy crying, for pete’s sake. Anyway, like I said, this guy wants to fuck an armadillo, but what’s really sad is that he’s ashamed of it so he tries to project conventional feminine attributes onto the poor fantasy beast as if that places his desires within the bounds of traditional heteronormativity, when in fact it just makes it all much, much worse.