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Mark Trail, 8/12/21

Oh, uh, the “Mark parties with influencers” storyline has wrapped up, and I’m not going to describe everything that happened (it was confusing?) but there was definitely punching. Now Bill Ellis is assigning Mark to a new editor who works for a member of Woods & Wildlife’s family of trusted brands: Hot Catch’s print run ended in 2011 and now it’s a blog with six to eight mostly aggregated content items per day, but it does have a freelance budget for the stories that it knows will bring in those clicks. And the W&W audience development team has determined exactly what that magic element is: Mark punching somebody. Will Mark be punching people violating fishing conservation laws, or just punching the fish themselves?

Dennis the Menace, 8/12/21

We established years ago that Dennis has achieved at least basic literacy, which raises a lot of questions about today’s panel. Is he doing a gender-reversed version of the thing where girls pretend to be dumb so boys will like them? I leave it to you to decide if the overall terribleness of this strategy is mitigated by the menace to the patriarchy that this particular move represents.

Beetle Bailey, 8/12/21

In order for the rhythm of this interchange to work, we have to assume that General Halftrack already has that bottle of liquor in his right hand in panel one, just out of our sight. I was going to say that he was wandering around the house with the bottle, waiting for the perfect setup for him to unleash a bon mot as he poured himself a glass, but based on his well-known disdain for his wife, perhaps any interaction with her would serve as a suitable trigger.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/12/21

A couple weeks ago we learned that Grimm is dead, and being tortured eternally in hell. “But how did he die?” you probably wondered. The answer is revealed in today’s flashback strip: it’s rabies. He didn’t get his rabies shot, and then he contracted rabies, which killed him.

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 7/29/21

So, Grimm, who is a dog, got his owner/”mom” a “gift,” but the joke is he’s too cheap to actually get her an engraved champagne bucket (?) and instead he stole one (???) from the Sheraton in Chicago, a fairly nice hotel where he somehow managed to stay, despite being a dog, and also cheap? Interesting. Interesting.

Shoe, 7/29/21

The Pefesser, who I have always assumed to be in late middle age at the youngest (not that it’s easy to tell when you’re dealing with a bird-man) is often seen using a crate as a chair. Speaking as an early as a mid-middle-aged man myself, I can say with some confidence that this would be terrible for your back! There’s something particularly grim about it here, as the Perfesser puts the finishing touches on his presumably unsellable book, in what appears to be his large and almost entirely unfurnished attic.

Dennis the Menace, 7/29/21

Dennis the Menace appears to have taken a tiny step forward into the modern age by depicting Alice engaging in the near-universal 2020s pastime of simultaneously watching TV and playing around on her phone. Of course, she’s still in a world where her husband is wearing a checkered sports coat while relaxing at home, so let’s not get too excited just yet.

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Dick Tracy, 7/27/21

Look, I have no insider knowledge and I’m not saying that the Dick Tracy creative team is in the midst of a contract dispute with their syndicate, but I am saying that if they were, claiming that “I don’t need the comics pages, I could get into the lucrative game design business” wouldn’t be the worst negotiate tactic! It would work a lot better if they actually owned the rights to Dick Tracy so they could turn it into a game, though.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/27/21

Say, have you somehow, against all odds, gotten emotionally invested in the character of Kyle Vidpa/Jake Rowling? Well, if so, the fact that he appears to be on the verge of fatherhood is probably making you feel … something? This is making you feel something, right? Sound off in the comments to let us know that that might be, exactly!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 7/27/21

We all, of course, are familiar with Grimm, one of the beloved title characters in Mother Goose and Grimm. Today’s installment of that strip poses the question: what if Grimm died, and was condemned to eternal torture in Hell, forever outside of God’s grace? That’s a real knee-slapper, if you think about it!

Pluggers, 7/27/21

AWWW YEAH IT’S THE PLUGGERS WET T-SHIRT PANEL YOU ALL ASKED FOR

WAIT, WHAT’S THAT? YOU DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS? YOU NEVER COULD’VE EVEN CONCEIVED OF ASKING FOR THIS?

HUH! LOOKS LIKE WE’RE ALL BEING TORTURED FOREVER OUTSIDE OF GOD’S GRACE, I GUESS