Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 3/7/16

So after a minute or so I gave up on trying to parse Sarge’s dialogue here as a joke, and then maybe 45 seconds after that stopped trying to parse it as actual sincere advice, and finally settled on just trying to figure the contexts — geographic, professional, social, whatever — in which today’s strip is taking place. Like we know from previous strips that Sarge has an office, though this one is looking more Endless Void-y than usual. But has Beetle just kind of … wandered in? To get weird, incomprehensible platitudes? From his commanding officer, who is reading them off a piece of paper, or possibly just holding up a blank piece of paper? I’m really going to have to grapple with the content of this joke to figure out what’s happening, aren’t I?

Mary Worth, 3/7/16

Aww, isn’t this sweet! Mary and Jeff are going to the Bum Boat … their place! And after that, they’ll be crashing every funeral they can, or at least I assume so based on Mary’s outfit. (In Santa Royale, crashing funerals is the closest you can get to hitting all the hottest goth clubs.)

Marvin, 3/7/16

Marvin’s usual M.O. is to mine laffs out of the title character’s constant pooping and peeing, which is gross but has a shred of respectability because, after all, he’s a baby! Pooping and peeing in a diaper is like a huge part of babies’ whole deal! But now we see the slippery slope we’ve been on all this time: if it’s OK to joke about Marvin and his butthole and what comes out of it, why not joke about his dad’s butthole now too, huh? Why not? Can you give me one good reason why not? Basic human decency, you say? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/29/16

FYI, guys, Rex Morgan, M.D., isn’t just about people giving Rex and his family money. It’s also sometimes about wacky old people! Like remember when a pair of demented seniors wandered away from a nursing home and made a small-time drug dealer’s life miserable? Or when an elderly brother-sister pair won the lottery, with hilarious results? Anyway, it looks like Rex has finally been bullied into buying that house in town, and sure, it’s in the leafy, huge-mansion part of town, but it’s also in the cranky, argumentative old people part of town! The next few days should give us plenty of the great Grimacing Rex Reaction Shots I crave.

Mary Worth, 2/29/16

[Mary Worth at the airport newsstand]: “People? Oh, my, dear, between you and me, it’s very difficult to keep up with multiple celebrities these days. Who has the time, really? No, one copy of Person, please.”

Hi and Lois, 2/29/16

I mean, you don’t want to do it so often that it becomes Funky Winkerbean-esque self parody, but if you want to end your gag-a-day strip once in a while with a son snidely reminding his father about the grim banality of his adult life, and the father just stares sullenly into space with his arms crossed across his chest, I’m not going to complain.

Marvin, 2/29/16

“I pee on it! I pee all over my phone! My phone is covered in urine. I’m a baby, but I’m depicted as having adult-level cognitive abilities, and, for some reason, I own a mobile phone, but I still pee and poop in my pants!”

Shoe, 2/29/16

“Ha ha, get it? Because of the ice cream flavor? Anyway, the actual story is that I was very drunk.”

Post Content

Hi and Lois, 1/28/16

“Why can’t we ever have a sleepover?” Trixie thinks. “Why can’t the sun remain forever in the sky, quickly warming our side of the globe beyond the ability of any life to survive, until the seas boil and the air burns away, while the other hemisphere is locked into eternal, icy night?” Fortunately, she isn’t one of those babies who have God-like powers to control time and space with her mind. She can just form adult sentences and concepts but can’t verbalize or act on them, so we really dodged a bullet here.

Judge Parker, 1/28/16

You know, I poke a lot of fun at the Spence-Drivers for their vast wealth and privilege, but let it never be said that they don’t deal with hardships! For instance, Abby spends so much time on her vast, lucrative farm that she’s no longer physically capable of smelling horse shit. Give Sam a few months in his new home office and his nose will be similarly damaged!

Marvin, 1/28/16

Meanwhile, Marvin’s friends, in defiance of all medical logic, are still fully able to experience the toxic miasma that surrounds him at all times. Today, though, the cold weather has caused whatever foul brew is in his diapers to freeze solid. This seems like it would be bad for him, health-wise, so it’s a good thing I don’t care about his well-being.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/28/16

“So you see, honey, I get to decide who lives and who dies and I have an excuse to ignore you while we eat. It’s what grownups call a ‘win-win.'”