Post Content

Folks, today is what would’ve been Peanuts creator Charles Schulz’s 100th birthday! I feel pretty strongly that he was the best who ever did it in the newspaper comics world, and one of the great things he did was not hand off the strip to a child or assistant and create one more zombie lurching across the funny pages.

Anyway, most of the strips (zombie or otherwise) are celebrating Peanuts today, and most of those celebrations and great and heartfelt. But this website isn’t called the Comics Respecter, so for this Thanksgiving Saturday I’m going to bring you the two worst ones. Enjoy!

Marvin, 11/26/22

Feel like this is the very worst of the bunch. Ha ha, Marvin is talking about the comic strip Peanuts, but his friend has never heard of it and thinks he’s talking about peanuts, the food! And why would he have heard of the comic strip, anyway? It stopped running in papers years ago and these guys are literal babies. Honestly it’s pretty weird that Marvin knows about it. Anyway, that’s it, the third panel is just wasted, and we assume these two babies move onto some other conversational topic that they can both engage with on equal terms. Couldn’t even be bothered to wedge a poop joke in there. Sad!

Beetle Bailey, 11/26/22

Speaking of sad, before they did this strip, the team over at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC probably briefly contemplated what their lives would be like if all comics artists were as protective of their creations as Charles Schulz was. Or maybe they didn’t! Honestly, nothing that’s ever appeared in this strip implies that they’re real introspective over there. Either way, their vision for this assignment was “What the town where the entire Peanuts gang lives was washed away in a flood, with a terrified Snoopy the only survivor?”

Post Content

OK KIDS HANG ONTO YOUR HATS because I have some things to share with you, some of which are TIMELY, others of which are just interesting:

• Don’t forget that if you live near Baltimore you can see me doing improv monologues with the Baltimore Improv Group at Magooby’s Joke House! Here’s info and ticketing, except (sigh) they have “Tim Hoeckel” named as the monologist (he did it the last time). But it’ll be me and it’s funny and you should come! Apocalyptic snowstorm? What apocalyptic snowstorm! The place to be during a big snow is a comedy club, where there’s lots of booze and fried food and and funny people (who you can eat when the inevitable descent into cannibalism happens).

• Do you live near Los Angeles? Maybe you would like to see a play based on certain characters from a certain beloved comic strip. (Hint: It is Peanuts.)

• Also if you are in Australia, you might enjoy this exhibit of Peanuts characters mashed up with rap lyrics.

• Also also I have been meaning for a long time to give a totally unsolicited plug for King Features’ DailyInk site, if only because I still get emails asking where to go for a build-your-own comics page site now that the Houston Chronicle shut theirs down. Yes, it’s a pay site, but it costs less than $2 a month. Did you know they’ll also deliver vintage strips, like the Judge Parkers below from 1969, which describe Sam and Abbey’s meet-cute? Obviously there are hippies involved.

And, finally, I wanted to remind all of you that don’t know that you can get updates about when I post to this site, as well as other things I write, public appearances, and dumb hilarious jokes, on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Google+!

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 4/28/11

Gosh, I don’t know, Tommie, maybe it’s because he’s drawn to look exactly like every other non-Dan Diller walk-on male character in Apartment 3-G? I’m much less interested in you déjà vu/first inklings of the extreme shallowness of your universe’s gene pool than I am in Dan Diller’s suddenly obvious sandwich addiction. As this picture shows (and, side note, don’t browse through Wikipedia’s American sandwiches category while you’re hungry, by the way), the reuben is not a sandwich to be treated lightly, and surely most people don’t order their next reuben with the Thousand Island Dressing from the previous one still moist in their beard. Like Wilbur Weston, Dan needs a serious sandwich intervention.

Peanuts, 4/28/11

Yes, it’s a slow day in the comics when I’m tackling Classic Peanuts, but … Linus should really be thankful for his frizzy hair, as nobody likes it when a little kid shows up to a party looking uncannily like Hitler.