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Beetle Bailey, 8/25/25

Comedy is, in large part, the art of subverting your audience’s expectations in ways they find pleasing. So you could see how it might make sense in theory to do a comic strip where a soldier yells “INCOMING!!” while pointing to the sky, setting up an expectation that he’s on the front lines and his position is about to get hit by an artillery barrage, only to reveal in panel two that he’s about to get pooped on by a bird, a much less life-threatening scenario. However, longtime readers know that the idea of any of Camp Swampy’s troops being deployed into combat is laughable, so the joke doesn’t really land. I will note that the second panel reinforces the punchline by showing us that Sarge and Beetle are hanging out somewhere littered with power lines, which provide ample places for birds to hang out while also being significantly easier to draw than the birds themselves.

Marvin, 8/25/25

“Marvin hates going to preschool” isn’t a strip theme I dwell on much, as it’s a less obvious target for mockery than “Marvin loves pissing himself,” but it’s just as grim in its own way. Today we learn that he hates going to school so much that he’d rather sit immobilized in his car seat indefinitely, his only company a parent who’s presumably fuming about traffic and who doesn’t feel much affection for him at the best of times, than go there. At least in this situation he can piss himself if he wants, I guess.

Dustin, 8/25/25

Wow, huge news! Dustin has finally stopped going to fern bars to find love and is joining the rest of his generation, along with the two generations before him, on the apps. He’s apparently still getting his bank statement sent to him in the mail, but, you know, baby steps.

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Marvin, 8/9/25

Sincere thanks to the editors who demanded that Marvin‘s creative team add the garden hose, change the punchline, and recolor the runoff.

Blondie, 8/9/25

Like me, Dagwood is of a generation for whom drinking out of the backyard hose brings back cherished summer memories of refreshment, petty transgression, and freedom. If Elmo’s lemonade was tapped from such a wellspring of fond nostalgia, Dagwood will savor it all the more. Nevertheless, he’ll make damn sure it came from Elmo’s own backyard, not that pissy toddler’s up the block.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/9/25

And anyway, it could be a lot worse.

9 Chickweed Lane, 8/9/25

Way back in 2016, I outlined the problem faced by 9 Chickweed Lane after the 2008 consummation of Amos’s and Edda’s courtship, which resolved the sexual tension that had long been the foundation of the strip. The solution, then as now, was to create Amos and Edda surrogates and run the whole will-they-or-won’t-they routine (spoiler alert: they will) over and over again.

But after nine years of barely disguised reruns, the narrative present has become overrun with Amos and Edda surrogates whispering coy innuendos, sublimating their lust into musical performance, and humping all over the damn place. What to do?

Apparently this: slip the bounds of time and plant those recaps in the past and future. Hence today’s legacy Edda demanding attention from prepubescent Amos, the pair’s future children, teenage twins Lolly and Polly, tormenting their own thralls, and an assortment of past, present, and future walk-on foils being sexually one-upped by the regulars. One constant is that they all seem to migrate to this lake here, which by now has got to be more grotty than Marvin’s pool.

Hi there, faithful reader! I’m sitting in for Josh through Sunday the 17^th, with a sampling of comics even Josh won’t touch, as well as the old soapers I know you crave. If you run into any issues with the site, subscriber emails, or Patreon posts, please contact me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net and I’ll do what I can to help. Enjoy!

—Uncle Lumpy

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Luann, 7/7/25

Hey kids, we all love Wilbur, the sad loser who has an off-putting relationship with his fish. But did you know there’s another such person in the comics — and she’s a lady? That’s right, it’s Bernice, Luann’s friend from Luann! Unlike Wilbur, who named his fish after himself and his ex, Bernice has given hers the whimsical name “Mr. Monstro.” Also unlike Wilbur, Bernice is capable of introspection, as the final panel makes clear, not that it’s really doing her any good.

Marvin, 7/7/25

Marvin is usually a light-hearted strip about a baby who won’t stop shitting himself and the parents and classmates who hate him, but real heads remember that there was a plotline in 2008 when Jenny’s parents lost their retirement savings in the Great Financial Crisis and had to move in with the Millers to escape destitution. I guess they ultimately got back on their feet again, though the fact that Marvin’s grandfather is excited to be hired for what I assume is a fairly low-paying and thankless job where you’re pretty much always on call in your own home tells me their finances never fully recovered. Obviously going back to their daughter’s house is not an option, though, not least because their son-in-law still won’t let them forget the last time they had to do it.

Wizard of Id, 7/7/25

I’m sorry, man, it’d be one thing if the Wiz were using his mystical powers to create chimeric combinations of natural beasts. But throw the word “breeding” in there and there’s really no other way to interpret this as “the Wizard of Id is somehow getting a whole bunch of different kinds of animals to have sex with horses.” There may not even be any magic involved.

Alice, 7/7/25

Big news, everybody: Alice is finally gonna get laid! And good for her.