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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/13/23

You know, at first I thought this was about the eternal struggle between the modern scientific method, as represented by Doc Pritchart and his flatlander medical degree, and the ancient, chthonic folk wisdom of the Holler, as represented by Granny Creeps and her cave full of potions. But then I realized that Doc is probably just trying to stop Snuffy from getting poisoned. He’s right to worry! Who the hell knows what’s in that stuff she’s going to give him!

Pluggers, 11/13/23

Look, Pluggers, I get that you’re a comic whose whole thing is that you take submissions from your readers who are, by definition, pluggers, and pluggers absolutely love to forward emails consisting of jokes that they themselves did not write to their friends and loved ones, but I feel like maybe you should Google those submitted jokes to make sure they aren’t from, say, Cool Funny Quotes Dot Com’s collection of quotes by Anonymous or a weirdly padded blog post on Grumpy Fuckers Dot Com written by “Royston Butterscotch” or a magnet you can buy from Fem Power Gifts by Getbullish or X, the website formerly known as Twitter before you go to the trouble of illustrating them with anthropomorphic chickens.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/13/23

It doesn’t count as “dramatic tension” per se, but for weeks now I’ve been really unable to tell whether or not Mud is supposed to be sincere about the Mirakle Method or not. I guess he believes both that the Method can improve your life and that people are rational economic actors who always have access to the full information they need to make spending decisions that will never regret. Buzzy, though? Buzzy seems shady. Feel like Buzzy’s gonna get forcibly Mirakl’d in the not so distant future, i.e., he’ll be weeping openly as he contemplates his own personal swingset on the moon.

Gasoline Alley, 11/13/23

I often have fun on this blog trying to figure out where exactly various syndicated newspaper strips take place. But, Gasoline Alley? Never really cared to put the energy into it, to be honest with you all. Good thing, too, because all I had to do is wait it out for a while until today, when the strip tells us the characters all live near Charlotte, North Carolina. Who would’ve guessed? Not me, I admit, but as noted I wouldn’t have tried very hard.

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Pluggers and Hi and Lois, 11/11/23

Happy Veterans Day, everyone! Do you think the United States is on the verge an apocalyptic war for national survival that will require us to call old men back into military service in a last-ditch and almost certainly doomed effort to fight back the overwhelming force of the enemy? Probably not, right? But still, it’s fun to keep those guys on their toes by hinting that it might be necessary in syndicated newspaper comics, their favorite form of media.

Gil Thorp, 11/11/23

Speaking of grizzled war vets, Gil Thorp apparently fought in the U.S. Army Air Force against the Luftwaffe during World War II, which means that he’s some sort of ageless immortal, which in turn has a lot of implications for any number of Gil Thorp plots. Like his slo-mo ongoing divorce, for instance: sure, it’s painful, but it’s something he has to go through every few decades, before his current wife starts to notice that he looks exactly like he did the day they got married.

Blondie, 11/11/23

Dagwood’s rich parents made sure he never got drafted into World War I or any of the wars that followed it, so no, Blondie will not be acknowledging Veterans Day, thank you very much. Anyway, a big problem with this strip is that the joke is supposed to be that Dagwood is hearing people use “beef” metaphorically and it makes him hungry for an all-beef hamburger patty, but then one of the speakers on TV is named “Mr. Burgomaster,” which kind of implies he’s already watching some kind of burger-themed entertainment, which muddles things, I think. Another problem with it is that it disrespects the troops.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/15/23

So the exciting (?) Mud/Rene kidnapping plot is over (??), and I gotta say probably the perfect sum up to any given Rex Morgan, M.D., storyline is “What did you make of that?” “Hard to say.”

Pluggers, 10/15/23

Sometimes Pluggers panels can pack in a lot of sociopolitical psychodrama, but despite the wordy caption, I’m pretty sure all this one is trying to convey is “pluggers are bad at golf.” Which, fair enough! Probably a lot of them are!

Mary Worth, 10/15/23

I guess Sonia is using the past tense here because her father is now retired from the military and the police, but I prefer to believe that she surreptitiously poisoned his root beer earlier in the evening, as soon as she realized he was the living, beefy embodiment of the Authority that she’s fought against her whole young life. You’re a dead man walking, Keith!