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Beetle Bailey, 2/7/25

Unfortunately, Beetle’s little prank happened to fall on the morning when the coalition of America’s enemies finally launched their long-planned invasion. With Camp Swampy’s main NCO out of commission until hours after the alarm was raised, and its commanding general blind drunk, the 13th Infantry Division was undermanned, unprepared, and unable to hold the left flank during the decisive Battle of Hurleysburg. Sarge never did forgive Beetle, but they were kept in different internment camps — Beetle and Killer had predictably gotten separated from the rest of the company during the chaos and were captured miles away from the main battle front — and never saw each other again before Beetle died of dysentery two years later.

The Phantom, 2/7/25

Not to be outdone by the Sunday Phantom doing a flashback to the adventures of an early Phantom in 16th century Africa, the weekday Phantom is doing a flashback to an even earlier Phantom, specifically the very first one, seen here swearing an oath over his father’s killer’s crab-eaten corpse. He’s only spent a little time in Africa at this point, but in the second panel you can see that he’s already very sunburned, and it’s a little disheartening 22 generations of Phantom decided the solution to this problem was to focus on advances in skin-protecting lycra technology so they could keep importing white brides from Europe.

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The Phantom, 2/2/25

A fun thing about The Phantom (the comic strip) is that it’s one of the oldest superhero franchises, and the Phantom (the character) hasn’t really changed much since the strip launched during FDR’s first term, so he recognizably fits into the “superhero” slot in our collective understanding of the word but one of his primary “superpowers” is “shoots guns”. The current Sunday storyline is sort of a Phantom: Origins flashback, showing what the current Phantom’s Phantom ancestor was up to during the Moroccan invasion of the Songhai Empire in the 1590s. Turns out what he was up to was using his “shoots guns” superpower, even then! Hey kids, you want to see a guy get shot in the chest, right here in the newspaper? It’s OK, it’s, uh, old-timey.

Curtis, 2/2/25

Don’t panic, Curtis! All you have to do is create a Wikipedia page for “Toby Wilkins,” complete with plausible-looking citations, before Mrs. Nelson gets home tonight! Admittedly that doesn’t really sound like something that’d be in your skill set, now that I think about it. Seems to be more like a Barry thing to be honest. Should’ve been nicer to your brother, Curtis! I personally would not quickly whip up a bogus Wikipedia page to help a guy who calls me “troll” on the regular.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/2/25

Your nephew’s band? Is it a roots country band??? We haven’t seen any roots country action in this strip since November, I’m starting to panic

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Beetle Bailey, 1/16/25

I actually am curious about the chain of thought that determined which secondary Beetle Bailey character got the punchline said at him in this strip. Personally, I would’ve gone with Plato — the camp intellectual would’ve been wryly amused at Beetle’s use of linguistic ambiguity to shirk a few hours of duty. But Killer is staring at him blankly and clearly doesn’t get it at all. “How is this going to help get anybody laid?” he thinks. “We’re not keeping our eyes on the prize here.”

The Phantom, 1/16/25

Just think: a mere 17 years ago, the very notion of women joining the Jungle Patrol was a source of near universal derision. But today, the feminine beauty of the Jungle Patrolwomen is legendary, so much so that criminal perverts like this guy arrange to be brutalized by the Phantom just so he can experience a touch of their healing fingertips. This is a triumph of, uh, feminism? Probably?

Crock, 1/16/25

Not sure why this guy is so intimidated by a rifle-toting yahoo back home. My dude, you are in the Foreign Legion and are posted in the colonies! You have definitely done some war crimes, probably today.