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Mary Worth, 8/17/21

Ha ha, remember that time Wilbur got drunk and obnoxious on a double date with his Estelle and his ex and his ex’s new hot young boyfriend, and she dumped him but he and Mary bullied her into taking him back? Well, you’d think he’d have taken the romantic lesson that he’s on thin ice and should probably stop being an asshole, but I guess instead the lesson he learned was “I can be an asshole and Estelle doesn’t have other options and will still never leave me,” because here he is, angrily yelling at her cat for stealing his spotlight on Piano Date Night.

Beetle Bailey, 8/17/21

I genuinely love that Beetle Bailey, despite being in no actual physical danger, has gone “method” during this war game and decided that, if he were captured by an enemy unit, he would absolutely not do the thing where he only tells them his name, rank, and serial number, but instead would lead them back to his command post. (This is assuming, of course, that what were seeing is the sort of military training exercise where participants are split into “blue” and “red” teams, and not an actual civil war.)

Crankshaft, 8/17/21

I’m not sure Crankshaft has actual fans, but for regular readers like myself, the final panel of today’s strip, in which Crankshaft is emotionally ground down by his failing body and intrusive thoughts about his rapidly approaching death, is definitely “fan service!”

Gil Thorp, 8/17/21

Oh no! Carter has been ambushed and dragged before a secret meeting of the Council of the Red Polo Shirts! He will be shamed as the Council ritually strips him of his own red polo shirt, right before he’s executed for golfcrime.

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Mary Worth, 8/16/21

Oh, snap! Did Drew get emotional closure on the whole getting-dumped-by-Ashlee situation? Nope! Did we ever really find out why Ashlee skipped town, exactly? Not really! But too bad, we’ve spent all the time we can on Drew on his problems, because it’s been way too long since we spent some time on Wilbur motherfucking Weston and all his problems! Now, I know from this strip it looks like Wilbur doesn’t have any problems. Honestly, it looks like he doesn’t have a care in the world! But believe me, folks: this is a man with some problems, and we’re going to hear about them in gruesome detail.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/16/21

I’m not sure which possibility suggested by this strip is more hilarious to me: that the climactic “Les and Lisa discuss the disposal of Lisa’s cremains” scene of Lisa’s Story: The Movie was filmed on a tiny set in front of a greenscreen, or that they built that little bench as “fun” prop for this hot Hollywood party, to remind the cast and crew what it’s all really about (it’s about how Lisa died of cancer, and her husband is and has been extremely noble about it).

Beetle Bailey, 8/16/21

Like most Americans, I’m into gritty, “edgy” reboots of existing intellectual property. So obviously I was deeply disappointed that today’s Beetle Bailey didn’t pay off on the promise of the first panel, which implied that we’d see a story where the denizens of Camp Swampy wonder if Beetle Bailey committed suicide.

Gil Thorp, 8/16/21

CSI: GOLF SCAMS: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT

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Daddy Daze, 8/11/21

I think we’re all well aware that the actual cat poster caption is “Hang In There, Baby,” which led to me read this strip and immediately wonder “Hmm, is the actual ‘Hang In There, Baby’ poster copyrighted, and is the copyright holder extremely litigious?” This in turn led me to the Wikipedia article about the poster, which was a whole journey, informing me that:

• The photographer was Victor Baldwin, who had previous been best known for taking pics of Rat Pack celebs
• The original version was this, a photo I was totally unfamiliar with



• It was immediately ripped off and knockoff versions with different pictures proliferated, which explains why I was unfamiliar with the original
• Baldwin sued the makers of all the knockoffs he could find, just on principle, almost never asking for more than his own court costs being covered, which I guess answered my original question
• The first person to buy the poster was Meredith Wilson, composer of The Music Man
• People sent copies of the poster to Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon during their respective scandals in the ’70s, urging them to hang on to office (it didn’t work)
• “Victor Baldwin made approximately $700,000 from sales of the posters, much of which went to settle his divorce, which he was apparently happy to spend it on”
• Based on their respective “See also” sections, Wikipedia apparently considers “Hang In There, Baby”‘s U.K. equivalent to be a a poster featuring a tennis player’s naked ass, based only on the fact that they were both wildly popular posters in the 1970s

Anyway! Comics can be truly educational, in the sense that they frequently irritate me into learning things despite myself.

Mary Worth, 8/11/21

Mary is starting to go through her highly regimented Meddle Protocol! Stage 1: Determine if the subject is capable of recognizing basic behavioral patterns!

Marvin, 8/11/21

JUNE 2021: Hmm, all the characters in Marvin are getting a little stale. Mostly they just are angry at Marvin all time time, and obviously you can’t blame them, but it gets old. What if we introduce a new — and topical — one: an Alex home assistant?

AUGUST 2021: We regret to inform you that the Alexa home assistant now mostly just gets angry at Marvin all the time.

Family Circus, 8/11/21

A fun fact about the Grand Canyon is that Colorado City, which is in the small sliver of Arizona north of the Grand Canyon, was for a long time a hotbed of rebel Mormon polygamists precisely because the state line protected them from Utah authorities and the Grand Canyon protected them from Arizona authorities, just putting that out there Billy