Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 8/10/20

Every once in a while, Beetle Bailey accidentally stumbles into creating a surrealist masterpiece, and I think today is one of those days. What’s your favorite part of this unsettling dreamscape? I’m a big fan of the forest suddenly giving way to the Sonoran Desert, the barbed wire fence that just abruptly stops, and, of course, the way the soldiers stand silently a foot or so apart in a seemingly infinite line, their faces carefully absent of any emotion or affect.

Mary Worth, 8/10/20

Look, Toby, tens of thousands of people successfully produce passable banana bread every year, and it’s not because there’s a secret ingredient only they know that they aren’t letting you in on! Stop trying to make Madi betray her beloved dead grandmother’s secrets just so you can get a tiny bit of clout at your dumb condo board meeting. I was going to say “just admit that you’re an artist, not a baker,” but then I remembered that you’re not much of an artist, either.

Post Content

Mary Worth, 8/8/20

You gotta respect that, despite the fact that Toby is Mary’s only real friend, Mary maintains the upper hand in their relationship by keeping her in constant terror that Mary will reject her for some unforgivable transgression, like making subpar banana bread. Don’t hate me, Mary! Don’t cast me out into the outer darkness! Don’t leave me alone with nobody but Ian to talk to! Ian, for God’s sake! I couldn’t take it!

Dennis the Menace, 8/8/20

Starting with a healthy skepticism of the motivations behind the actions of powerful institutions but then veering into increasingly deranged paranoid conspiracy theories is a little on the nose for our current menacing moment, thank you very much!

Shoe, 8/8/20

“Because I and all the customers are birds. You know, animals, like you’d see in the zoo. Is there a special word for a bird-zoo? An avarium or something? Is that a thing? Anyway: birds.”

Post Content

Mary Worth, 8/5/20

Hey, have you been wondering what Toby’s been up to in the two months since we last saw her, back when she was expressing mild trepidation over having agreed to make a dessert for the next Charterstone meeting? Well, turns out she’s been 100% fucking up the dessert she agreed to make for the next Charterstone meeting! The best part is definitely Toby looking at her kitchen iPad or whatever that is and yelling “What the…?” like she’s shocked to learn her goal is supposed to be a loaf of some sort rather than the two big bowls of goo she’s managed to produce, but I really enjoy the little details, like the fact that she appears to have just cracked a raw egg onto her countertop and is it letting it sit there breeding salmonella.

Daddy Daze, 8/5/20

Obviously it’s just yet another instance of slapdash syndicate coloring, but Daddy Daze Daddy’s icy white skin in panel one makes it look like he was under some kind of wizard’s curse that can only be lifted by an baby’s smooch. It’s pretty creepy! Not as creepy as the overall premise of the strip, which is that a terribly sad and isolated single parent spends all his time projecting his increasingly manic and baroque fantasies onto his preverbal infant, but creepy nonetheless.