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Beetle Bailey, 4/6/24

I’m sorry, Sarge doesn’t know any “raunchy” songs. He may be a brute who spends his days preparing men for the horrors of war by delivering arbitrary violence upon them, but in many ways he seems quite naive. He definitely doesn’t know what sex is, for instance.

Mary Worth, 4/6/24

Look, man, we all enjoyed Wilbur’s total karaoke emotional meltdown from last April and his public karaoke-off with his ex the previous November, but I feel like this is going to the well one too many times. I’m over it! I’m going to try to get over how positively delighted Mary looks at the thought of Wilbur “pulling in” hapless “ladies” for unsatisfying sex and even less satisfying relationship behavior, but that’s going to take some time.

Gil Thorp, 4/6/24

As someone who relies on the syndicated newspaper strip Gil Thorp to discover what the teens are into, I’m excited to learn that what they’re into is beloved Gen X indie rocker Aimee Mann, and what they want to hear from her is “Red Vines,” the single from her 2000 album Bachelor No. 2. Naturally, being a 49-year-old man who thought of himself as vaguely hip 24 years ago, I find this news satisfying and will be doing no further research on the subject of teen musical tastes in the year 2024.

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Arctic Circle, 4/5/24

Arctic Circle is a comic strip about a bunch of penguins that live in the Arctic (YES I KNOW THAT’S WRONG, IT’S PART OF THE JOKE/LORE), and is mostly about environmental issues and environmental-issues-adjacent storylines. Like, they’ve been doing a week or so about feral pigs, which are … I guess we can say they’re environmental-issues-adjacent, right? Seems like more of a Mark Trail thing, to be honest, though even nu-look Mark Trail wouldn’t have the guts to do a storyline where a bunch of feral pigs became trapped in a restaurant kitchen and devoured the food supplies, the back-of-house staff, and, eventually, each other.

Mary Worth, 4/5/24

It is, I want to emphasize, not OK that Dawn leaving town to reunite with her estranged mother and also avoid her ex was not the starting point to her own wacky story line but rather just a plot device to do yet more “oh, boo hoo, Wilbur is isolated and alone” nonsense. That said, if Wilbur was rejected, one by one, as he asks the neighbors, acquaintances, and former sex partners that he considers his “friends” if they want to hang out, I think that would ease the sting a bit for me, actually.

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Dennis the Menace and Blondie, 4/1/24

Is there any “holiday” more vile and unpleasant than April Fool’s Day, which is mostly marked by “pranks” perpetrated by the least funny people alive? These tricks generally take one of two very simple forms, as illustrated neatly in these two strips: making someone believe that something bad is happening when it really isn’t, or making someone believe something good is happening when it really isn’t. Does anyone enjoy either? I’m going to say no.

Dustin, 4/1/24

The “making someone believe something good is happening” one is a particularly dangerous game, as Dustin is discovering, especially if you put a lot of work into it! Look at how mad his father is in panel two. He’s about to put his son out on the street and have him carry those presumably empty boxes to his nonexistent new apartment.

Pluggers, 4/1/24

Today’s Pluggers is just a baffling and confusing series of decisions (is Smokey a plugger? “April Phurst”? The Philippines?) meant to keep you completely off-kilter with no real resolution, and in that sense is the only good April Fool’s Day strip. Kudos.

Mary Worth, 4/1/24

The worst prank of all, however, has been perpetrated by Mary Worth on all of us. We were all looking forward to Dawn’s hilariously disastrous reunion with her cold, withholding mother, but instead we’re going to get … Wilbur realizing his life is empty and meaningless? WE ARE ALREADY WELL AWARE OF THIS, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES DO WE NEED IT REHASHED OVER THE NEXT SIX TO FIFTEEN WEEKS