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Dustin, 11/13/19

Hey, everyone, did you know that beloved Dustin character Dustin’s mom “Helen” is a talk radio DJ, or [squints] possibly a podcaster? Anyway, a thing I think would be pretty wild would be to go back to 1968 and try to explain that someday there was going to be a “battle of the generations” newspaper comic strip and the strip’s Baby Boomers would be the ones making fun of marijuana legalization advocates.

Slylock Fox, 11/13/19

Hey kids! Death comes for us all, for each and every living thing on this Earth, and will come for you, eventually; but due to variations in biology, some species have fewer happy days in to spend in this one and only precious life than others! Which of these adorable animals is most statistically likely to feel the icy hand of the Reaper on their shoulder first, guiding them through the Veil into nothingness? No matter how you answer, remember, someday we’ll all be there together! Ha ha, that turtle is an angry policeman!

Mary Worth, 11/13/19

Having finally gotten a moment to stop thinking about what this double date means for her romantic situation, Estelle realizes what this double date means for the next 24 to 48 hours of her bathroom situation. She’s not living her best life, guys!

Dick Tracy, 11/13/19

Sorry, guys, but no attempted on-purpose joke in the comics this week will be even a fraction as funny as the police diver flashing a thumbs-up to Dick to let him know that “Yep! They’re dead!”

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Dick Tracy, 11/12/19

Folks, another Dick Tracy plot has come and gone without me bothering to keep you up on the details much, but trust me when I say it was generally kind of confusing and there’s been absolutely no in-story explanation of why Det. Frisk’s hair, once blonde, is now abruptly Manic Panic pink. I didn’t even bother to inform you when the storyline’s villains, whose motivations I never had a particularly firm grasp on, drove their car off a bridge and into a river. But I thought you might enjoy today’s strip, in which Tracy makes an extremely half-assed attempt to radio for help, and then he and Frisk calmly discuss the fact that their antagonists’ souls will be tortured forever in hell, probably.

Mark Trail, 11/12/19

Remember, kids, if you encounter an enormous six-foot ‘gator, a few well-placed WHACK KA-WHACKs will be enough to defeat it! Definitely feel free to just bonk that ‘gator with whatever big stick you have handy. No ill will come of it, for you!

Mary Worth, 11/12/19

Estelle thinks not taking Wilbur’s glasses off after gently tucking him in on the couch and then thought ballooning about how she had an unpleasant evening constitutes an appropriate response to this evening’s mayhem, which is why Estelle needs to learn to respect herself

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Dennis the Menace and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/11/19

An online pal of mine pointed out to me the other day that many of the characters from the comics are not who we think of them as, generationally speaking. Mark Trail and Rex Morgan, who began their existence as adults in the 1940s, remain in the prime of their manhood today, and are thus almost certainly Gen Xers or maybe even older Millennials. That’s right! Whenever you hear about how Millennials are ruining everything today with their safe spaces and their avocado toast, remember that people are talking about Rex Morgan when the say that!

Normally this doesn’t really matter, but nothing creates an uncomfortable intersection between real time and comic book time like a fixed historical event, so we probably need to think about what wars various honored comic strip veterans are veterans of as of 2019. Mr. Wilson was an old man when Dennis the Menace debuted in 1951 and was probably supposed to have been a veteran of the trenches of the Western Front; today I suppose he’s a Vietnam Vet, incongruous as that seems. Snuffy Smith offers an even more difficult case, because I don’t think anyone has a real clear sense of how many years old Snuffy Smith is supposed to be, forgetting for the moment of what year he was supposed to be born in. Like, he and Loweezy are weird wizened potato-people who kind of look like they’re super old? But they also have an infant son? Presumably Snuffy is like 35 years old and a veteran of the Iraq War; Lukey, despite his Rip Van Winkle-esque long white beard, is maybe 50 and served in the Gulf War in ’91. Sadly, life in grindingly poor Hootin’ Holler has aged them much faster than their combat stints did.

Gasoline Alley, 11/11/19

Meanwhile, Gasoline Alley keeps aging its characters in real time, which means that Walt is now the the last living veteran of World War I. He reminds us that they used to call it “Armistice Day,” because at the end of four years of unfathomable carnage everyone thought the horrors they had endured meant that we wouldn’t fight any more wars. Sorry, guys! Sorry we fucked it up!

Mary Worth, 11/11/19

Speaking of people who fucked things up, look at Wilbur’s face in panel one here. He doesn’t think he fucked anything up at all! He thinks that date went great. He got to make fun of Zak and eat some yummy noodles, and now a lady who’s pretty like his mommy is tucking him into sleep. What’s not to like? This good feeling will probably last forever, and will certainly still be suffusing his body when he wakes up in the morning, that’s for sure!

Dustin, 11/11/19

Dustin the comic strip launched in 2010, which means it’s basically an infant in the world of newspaper syndication, but it’s already accrued a character typical to legacy strips: a little kid who’s not related to the any of the other main characters but hangs around with them all the time and you never seem to see their parents or other family members! Where do these children come from? Do they just kind of show up up one day in comic strip character homes if you leave food uncovered, like mice? Anyway, shoutout to Dustin’s mom for figuring out how to get rid of this particular pest, by convincing him that the toilet paper they use has other people’s poop on it still.