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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?

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Beetle Bailey, 10/4/21

I’m reasonably sure that if a soldier were running away from his commanding officer, who intended to brutally beat him, and was live-streaming the whole thing, that is the sort of thing that would go viral! Probably, uh, not in a fun way, though.

Mary Worth, 10/4/21

Wow, looks like Wilbur’s going to upgrade, lady-wise! When confronted with an ill-behaving pet, his ex was all like “Let’s talk about everybody’s feelings,” blah blah blah. But Carol offers sensible and concrete solutions, like “maybe don’t leave things out where your dog can chew on them” or “what do you mean you didn’t buy a chew toy for your dog, you utter dolt.” I think they’re gonna get along just fine!

Pluggers, 10/4/21

Everything else, though? Goes right into the landfill, even if it’s recyclable. Sometimes it doesn’t even make it into the trashcan. A lot of times pluggers just throw stuff out the window of their moving car!

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Mary Worth, 10/2/21

[At the wedding] “So she said to me, ‘Is that your Frenchie?’” [leers grotesquely, everyone is kind of uncomfortable] “And I said ‘Yes. They’re cute, aren’t they? Except for the…” [really unsettlingly long pause, leers even more grotesquely, everyone waits for it, not really sure what “it” is going to be] “CHEWING!’” [disgust rises, nobody can quite put their finger on what he’s getting at here or what this double entendre is but they can all agree it’s very gross] [there’s no cute Pierre accent jokes in this one, he’s run far, far away at this point]

Hi and Lois, 10/2/21

I love the way the first panel here emphasizes the difference in height between our two mismatched best buds. It’s as if Hi is trying to physically intimidate Thirsty into finally, after literal decades, embracing the craft brew revolution. Sorry, Hi! The whole point is to drink the beers as quickly as possible to get buzzed as quickly as possible, and you can’t do that if you have taste it.