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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/6/20

Haha, well, this is one of the grimmer scenarios Snuffy Smith has served up to us, isn’t it folks? Was the head of the local cemetery so hated that his former subordinates, now leaderless and squabbling, have to bury him in the dead of night, with no witnesses? Anyway, what I actually want in life is for every scene in any visual art that depicts a heavy reminder of life’s mortality to feature Snuffy Smith wandering through the foreground, a sack full of stolen chickens over his shoulder and a tongue lolling out of his mouth indicating his amusement at human frailties.

Mark Trail, 7/6/20

You know, back when Rusty was a mere “ward,” he never would’ve dared to express admiration for bad boy movie stars, because he knew that one wrong move and he’d be sent back to the orphanage, or just lured out to the forest with the promise of a “fishing trip” and then abandoned. But ever since Mark started letting Rusty call him “dad”, the kid thinks he can get away with anything! Hopefully Jeremy Cartwright will turn out to be a real shitheel and Rusty will realize that Mark and only Mark is a good example.

Beetle Bailey, 7/6/20

Wow, if I had to guess which character in a long-running legacy comic strip was secretly an Instagram food influencer, Sarge would … not be it? Like, we’d all think it was Dagwood, right? Definitely Dagwood. Anyway, all of the obvious variations on “Sgt. Snorkel” are as of this writing still available as usernames on Instagram, so feel free to start a gimmick account that you’ll get bored with in a week or two!

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Blondie, 7/4/20

There’s been an uptick in Alexa jokes in the comics lately, which I assume can be chalked up to the fact that digital assistants are now common enough to be more or less universally familiar, but novel enough to still be a little strange, basically exactly where iPods were in 2006. Still, I do always wonder about the possibility of paid product placement. Amazon is one of the most powerful and wealthy corporations in the history of the human race, and while a lot of people would argue about whether it’s possible to have too much money, I think we could agree that having so much money that you can spare some on advertising in Blondie is a bad sign.

Mark Trail, 7/4/20

Hey, remember a few years back when Mark adamantly defended magazine writing as “a good career for me to provide for my family?” Well, fuck that noise, he’s got a chance to sell out to Hollywood and he’s taking it.

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Mark Trail, 7/3/20

Hey, uh, you may have heard that James Allen is finishing up his time at Mark Trail! When asked by the Daily Cartoonist whether it was his decision or King Features’, he said “A bit of both — I’m tired and they wanted a new direction.” Maybe it was a mutual decision and maybe it was informed Allen’s tendency to get into social media feuds, with, for instance, members of Congress, or random people on Twitter who run Andy Griffith podcasts, who can say, but the real important question is: how will this affect the current movie storyline? Will the new author just drop this promising development abruptly, just like the tale of Franco Wallace, lover and pinhead, faded out too soon when Woody Wilson left Rex Morgan, M.D.? Or will the new writer have to find their own way through the plot, just as the producers of this human trafficking movie are going to have find their own way to profitability now that the IP rights holder has casually agreed to funnel much of its revenue to charitable causes?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/3/20

Wow, I’ll say this about the great love story that’s about to begin here: June absolutely, 100% had to know what she was getting in to.