Post Content

Gasoline Alley, 10/22/21

So Gasoline Alley is meandering along with one of its typically shambolic plots about a park ranger’s kids (the same ones who had to deal with sexually aggressive talking frogs) who are scared of a local abandoned house and so their mom thinks that maybe that would be a good spot for Halloween festivities, except oh whoops it seems there’s a realtor at the house and it’s just been sold so it’s not abandoned after all! That all is … certainly not particularly interesting, but I am a little charmed that the park ranger lady is willing to go there when it comes to really playing out the consequences of what would happen if some kids got horribly injured at an unsafe haunted house. If you went to some farmer’s cooperative all decorated with fake ghosts and stuff, but then you tripped and fell onto a pitchfork and it impaled you and you died and your actual spirit was condemned to haunt the building for all eternity, as a warning for those who don’t follow proper safety protocols for children’s events, that would be pretty ironic, I would think!

Judge Parker, 10/22/21

Hey Abbey! Has it occurred to you that maybe these people are willing — nay, thrilled — to think the worst of you and blame you for all their problems precisely because they’ve known you all their lives as the haughty rich lady who lives in the giant “ranch” that takes up half the town? Just putting that out there!

Post Content

Mary Worth, 10/6/21

“Bonjour, mes amis! Eet ees your old friend Pierre here, and today I find myself in a conundrum that would baffle even my countryman Jean Baudrillard! For what, in zees strange parc chien, is real, and what is a seemulacrum? Zees fire hydrant, for instance: nowhere close to any beeldeengs, presumably not connected to zee plumbing, existing only as a wheemsical reminder of zee urban spaces zees park dwellers have rejected! Where once dogs, like people, lived in embedded in a shared urban landscape and repurposed its functional artifacts for their own uses — making water, in zee case of zee hydrants — now we reside in a suburban form, in which activities are segmented by geography, and space has been set aside only for dogs to run and peess. And yet some part of zees people, zees new breed of Homo suburbicus, longs for the city they can only deemly remember, and zo zey put up zees false fire hydrant as a sort of memento mori for a lost way of life! And zees other dog, zees lady Frenchie — uncannily like myself, as eef my very essence was captured, copied, fleeped 180 degrees, recolored, and given some feminine seegnifiers! Truly a baffling experience, like barking into a mirror! At least it is deestracting me from Weelbur’s flirting. When the man adopted me, I thought, ‘Surely I will never have to weetness this man making love to another human being,’ but I may have been meestaken! A troubling prospect, non?”

Daddy Daze, 10/6/21

This may be my favorite Daddy Daze yet, in that it gets to what I believe to be the true heart of the strip, which is that the Daddy Daze daddy is in fact a sad, lonely man slipping into insanity and the Daddy Daze baby is really beside the point, except insomuch as his mother will have to care for him full time once his father goes truly around the bend. Note that in today’s strip there’s not even a pretense that the Daddy Daze baby is using his “ba” language to participate in whatever madness his father has going on.

Judge Parker, 10/6/21

Hey, remember when April went to prison? And then later, when Judge Parker senior went to prison? Well, what if everybody in this strip goes to prison, eventually?

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 9/29/21

BEETLE BAILEYS WHERE SARGE ASSAULTS BEETLE AND POUNDS HIM INTO A PILE OF GOO: Goofy, fun, cartoonish, the whole family can enjoy them

BEETLE BAILEYS WHERE SARGE ASSAULTS BEETLE, RESULTING IN A VERY SPECIFIC AND REALISTIC INJURY: Really quite disturbing, honestly

Judge Parker, 9/29/21

Big news: Ronnie and Neddy’s TV show, based on Neddy’s adventures with Godiva and April, is finally coming to Netflix! Sadly, the production’s hair department did not get the memo on the only way you can tell Godiva and April apart (April has a ponytail, Godiva doesn’t).

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/29/21

“Wait she … doesn’t want to endlessly bask in glow of success that came very easily to her? My God, where did we go wrong as parents? What kind of Morgan is she?”