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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.”

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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.

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Dennis the Menace and Hi and Lois, 10/29/20

Truly, there’s nothing more menacing than a child who becomes extremely aware of their own ability to perform a sort of exaggerated pantomime of childhood antics. Look at Dennis’s sickeningly smug facial expression in panel two — it’s like he didn’t ruin the wall for the joy of it, but rather just so he could unleash this sub-Family Circusism on his poor mother. Dot, too, is really overdoing it; a child rejoicing in the suffering of a sibling is demonstrating a distasteful but natural human emotion, but she’s making such a big deal of her cruel mirth that it’s clearly meant for an audience, one that for the moment is withholding the attention she so obviously and pathetically craves.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/29/20

Snuffy’s facial expression similarly seems wildly overdone, but I think we’re supposed to read it as genuine. See, he’s really depressed because he’s so poor and so deep in debt that he can’t afford to buy anything to eat, which is … the punchline to this strip, I guess?