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The Lockhorns, 4/24/23

Happy Monday, everyone, and it’s a truly happy Monday indeed when the day’s Lockhorns panel features Leroy openly weeping, or at so least so overwrought with emotion that he’s hiding his face in his hand. Like, this deadpan zinger from Loretta would be funny in any circumstance where he takes his fantasy league a little too seriously, but it’s very funny if he’s actually crying about it. Is he so upset because his emotional life is very empty and he’s way, way overinvested in fantasy baseball, the only fun part of his day? Or has he made some ill-advised side bets and lost a lot of money?

Hi and Lois, 4/24/23

Look, I’m not going out of my way to rain on anybody’s date night fun, but I’ve been reading this strip for years and I’m pretty sure I never knew that Lois’s mother (also Beetle Bailey’s mother, for the record) lived in the same town as the Flagstons, or at least close enough that she could be called upon for last-minute baby-sitting duty, so honestly that means it’s been quite a while since they hung out and maybe they should invite her to dinner.

Pluggers, 4/24/23

ME ON THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2023: Being a little forgetful about names is a normal thing for a person to experience. I’m not opening myself up to shame or ridicule by talking about it on my blog for everyone to read.

ME ON MONDAY, APRIL 24, 2023: Oh no. Oh NO.

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Gil Thorp, 4/11/23

Oh, gosh, I guess I’ve been failing to keep you informed on Actual Sports Action in Gil Thorp, although obviously you’re fully up to date on Unsettlingly Realistic Mascot Action. Anyway, during the championship game, a collision between two players caused one of them to go into cardiac arrest, just like what happened to the Buffalo Bills’ Damar Hamlin, but unlike those wimps in the NFL, our high school players finished their game and the Mudlarks won the championship to cap off an undefeated season. I’m showing you today’s strip because I know it contains action you do care about (Coach Hernandez whispering erotic threats into Gil’s ear).

Dick Tracy, 4/11/23

Meanwhile, in Dick Tracy, there’s a new criminal with a strong theme on the loose, and you can tell by Dick’s face in the final panel the withering contempt he holds this guy in. “Remember when my rogues gallery consisted of people with horrible scars or mutations, and perpetrating violence was the thing they loved most of all? Well, now I’m going up against a guy who’s into [extremely heavy sigh] classic game show.”

Dennis the Menace, 4/11/23

I guess the joke here is that this birthday party is such a wild ride with Dennis and the other local brats that a normal clown can’t handle it, but that doesn’t really match up with what we’re seeing, which is a bunch of children standing around holding balloons politely. So maybe Mr. Wilson is actually just hoping a violently bucking bull will soon burst through the fence, trampling everybody to death.

Hi and Lois, 4/11/23

I am absolutely in favor of Hi and Lois leaning into a new concept for Hi and Thirsty’s work life: that Mr. Foofram is a weak nebbish that Thirsty and Hi constantly walk all over. “He’s taking me out to lunch — then we’re gonna come back and fuck on your desk, so you might want to clear out.”

Pluggers, 4/11/23

Many years ago I caught some blowback for smugly claiming that pluggers live in filth because they’re gross and lazy. Now that I’m older and wiser, but mostly older, I see the truth: pluggers live in filth simply because most filth is on the floor, and you have to bend over to get to it.

Mary Worth, 4/11/23

I’ve been trying for a while to come up with my own joke about this strip but I’m afraid it’s perfect and requires no elaboration? Enjoy Estelle efficiently finding a solution for this beefy man and his ailing boa constrictor that doesn’t add to Dr. Ed’s workload or emotional load, everybody!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/23/23

I think it’s worthwhile to occasionally reflect on how weird the newspaper comic Snuffy Smith is, as a cultural object. Starting out as an entirely different strip about city life in the 1920s, during the Great Depression it changed its setting and vibe entirely to cash in on the vogue for vaudeville-derived jokes about hillbillies and kept going with that for more than 80 years. This humor genre only imperfectly mapped onto the lives of the Appalachian rural poor at the time, and has stayed more or less locked in place as reality drifts further and further from it. That’s how you get oddities like today, in which a distant memory of deadly clashes over land and status that arose between kinship groups in the absence of a government with a monopoly on legitimate violence gets processed through decades worth of creative and cultural drift and comes out as “a new world record for stubborness [sic].”

Gil Thorp, 3/23/23

This is pretty much a worst case scenario for a one-day celebrity coaching cameo: the celebrity coach not only completely revamps your team’s overall gameplan, but does so in a way that requires that everyone be at peak physical condition in order to execute the new strategy. Then he leaves and makes it Coaches Thorp and Cami’s problem! At least the Mudlarks will have some time to really perfect their “Apache basketball” techniques before [aide whispers in ear] oh, right, I’ve neglected to tell all of you that in fact Milford has had an undefeated season thanks to its pre-Kareem strategy and now the only game left to play is the championship. This’ll go great!

Pluggers, 3/23/23

Look, I’ve read Pluggers every day since 2006 and I feel pretty confident in saying that this isn’t even remotely true. Pluggers have a ton of problems, and most of them cannot be solved by a cup of coffee. A lot of them can’t be solved at all!