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Blondie, 1/20/21

Much as I would like to live in a world where, even in bland suburban communities like the one where the Bumsteads live, there are standalone storefronts that cater entirely to readers of niche publications like Vinyl and Fish and Giants Fan, I feel I must point out that even full-service bookstores are having a hard time staying afloat in the age of Amazon, so I am forced to describe the setting of today’s Blondie as “wholly unrealistic.” I’m trying to imagine the sequence of decisions that led to the creation of today’s strip, and while it makes sense that the writer of a legacy newspaper strip would imagine a paradise where print media still ruled, I think it’s more likely that they came up with a magazine joke first and were trying to figure out where to set it and thought “magazine … store?” and decided to call it a day at that point.

Dennis the Menace, 1/20/21

Gina has long been one of the less interesting characters in Dennis the Menace, since her whole deal seems to be “a girl, but less annoying than Margaret.” But she’s certainly shot to the top of the menacing charts with her new project, the Neighborhood Racial Purity Census.

Hi and Lois, 1/20/21

Dawg’s dead, everyone. Dawg’s dead and he’s in heaven now. Pour one out for Dawg, the beloved dog character from the syndicated newspaper comic Hi and Lois!

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Hi and Lois, 1/19/21

Do you think the Flagston kids are being sarcastic here? I mean, kids generally have, um, let’s say “unrefined” palettes, so I imagine they’re actually quite jazzed about getting spaghetti and hot dogs on nights when Lois is showing her clients McMansions after dark because you “really get a sense of how quiet these gated communities are at this hour” or whatever. This, to me, makes Hi’s sour, gloomy facial expression in the final panel even funnier. He hates that his kids are excited about the extremely basic things that strain his limited cooking skills, and holds both them and himself in simultaneous contempt.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/19/21

Welp, it seems Buck’s meek, mild-mannered, easily winded persona has been an act, a front to hold back the monster within, the monster who dreams of nothing but carnage. But now that he’s going to have draw blood from his finger every day … well, Buck can’t speak to what’s going to happen next. But it won’t be pretty.

Beetle Bailey, 1/19/21

Oh, Sarge. Foolish Sarge. Did you think that you could pound a man into a puddle of goo and then reshape him into a human form three times a week and not create something … more pliable, but also something essentially inhuman? Something no longer tied to a stable physical form, or to our sense of morality? Be afraid, be very afraid of what you have wrought.

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Six Chix, 12/16/20

It was just back in March of this year that there was a Rhymes With Orange strip about dogs pissing on sentient snowmen for which the syndicate colorist bravely held the line and refused to use yellow to highlight the clearly drawn section where the snowman got pissed on. But the last nine months have frankly felt like about a million years, and so now, in December, the colorists have clearly just given up. You wanna do a comic where a snowman tries to bargain with a dog to stop the pissing? Sure, whatever. Let’s make the piss the same color as the sunset, too, just really drive home the melange of beauty and disgust that we’re aiming for. It’s been a year, man, there’s no point in being precious about, well, anything. Also, fun fact, I at first misremembered the Rhymes With Orange strip linked above as a Six Chix strip, so I spent a lot of trime trying to find it in my Six Chix archives using keywords like “urine” and “piss” and “pee” and honestly I got a lot of results, so clearly I am, and always have been, Part Of The Problem.

Beetle Bailey, 12/16/20

No one would ever mistake Lt. Fuzz for a Jacobin; his only ideological orientation is towards his own advancement. But clearly he’s not moving up the ladder in the army’s current structure, so maybe he thinks that so long as he backs the guillotining of a few aristocrats he’ll have better luck with the French Revolutionary practice of officers being elected by their soldiers (he won’t).

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/16/20

CALLING IT NOW: Buck has come down with just a touch of the ol’ diabeetus! In normal times, newspaper readers can handle exciting medical things happening to Buck, like him getting shot in the head with a nail gun. But in the midst of a global pandemic, and especially with Wilford Brimley’s tragic passing this year, we need the comfort of a diabeetus storyline, to anchor us emotionally.

Dennis the Menace, 12/16/20

“My goodness and badness exist in superposition in the same physical space, in defiance of the laws of physics! My mother cringes away from me whenever I approach in horror at the ontological whirlpool of virtue and vice that I have become!”

Hi and Lois, 12/16/20

Is someone laughing? Fooling around? Having fun? Well they won’t anymore, not after Lois gets to the bottom of this!