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Beetle Bailey, 2/9/21

I guess the point of this strip is that each of these characters is responding to the question of what to get Sarge for his birthday in his own way, according to his own character (in Beetle Bailey, “character” means “whatever dumb on-the-nose collection of tics and running gags they’ve accrued over the years”). So, Plato wants to give him a book, because he’s a nerd; Killer wants to give him a box of candy, because he’s so monomaniacally focused on getting laid that his only context for gift-giving is the cliches of heterosexual courtship; Zero wants to to give him a comic book, because he’s dumb (?); and Rocky wants to give him a music mix, because he’s named “Rocky” due to the fact that when he was introduced into the strip, his one-note character was focused on liking rock ‘n’ roll music, which was as novel then as omnipresent personal computers were when Specialist Chip Gizmo was introduced in the early ’00s, because that’s just how long Beetle Bailey has been around. Anyway, I wanted to point out that all of these people are giving Sarge something they’d like, not something that he would actually want to receive. Can you visualize Sarge reading a book? Of course not. Only Beetle’s proposal is actually thoughtful. Sadly, it will not be appreciated.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/9/21

After kicking off his life as a diagnosed diabetic with one last indulgent fast-food meal, Buck’s blood sugar numbers got real bad, but then he came home and exercised, and they got OK again! Is this … how diabetes works? I don’t know much about it but I do know that Rex Morgan, M.D., is a rigorously fact-checked comic that aims primarily to spread accurate medical information, so I’m just going to assume that this is, in fact, how diabetes works. Good job, Buck! Looks like you’re on your way to a healthy lifesty[finally gets to narration box at bottom of second panel] OH NO

Pluggers, 2/9/21

I mean, duh, of course he’s not going to fold up his underwear. The wrinkle lines are a further turn-on for fans of the sick sex thing that Pluggers, in one of 2021’s biggest surprises, has become.

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Shoe, 2/3/21

The “punchline” here isn’t a new joke; I’m reasonably sure I said this more than a decade ago about Michael Phelps, who owned the pool where I swam in Baltimore and who I therefore saw in the locker room multiple times, and I certainly didn’t make it up. In fact, I’d argue it’s barely a joke at all, more just a funny turn of phrase, really. But I do appreciate that they’ve given this cliche that special Shoe twist, which is to say they’ve put it in the context of one of the main characters’ devastatingly depressing personal lives. “I’m tellin’ ya, Shoe, he had muscles in places I don’t even have places! No wonder she left me. I hate my body and myself.”

Pluggers, 2/3/21

Pluggers, like all comic strips, must evolve to survive, and it could go in any number of ways. But I think I speak for all of us when I say that I sincerely did not want or expect it to go with [late middle-aged dog-man doing a sexy baby voice] “Hey, it’s a shiny quarter. Oopsie, did my pants fall down again?”

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Pluggers, 2/2/20

There is a surprising amount to unpack in today’s Pluggers! Let’s start with the idea that Groundhog Day is some kind of national plugger holiday, like the Oscars is for us coastal elites, and they get up early to catch all the shadow-seeing action on TV — or, if they live in DuBois, PA, a mere thirty minutes from Punxsutawney, drive to see the event in person. Then you have a thought balloon from the poor groundhog, indicating that he’s capable of sapience, which reaffirms all our worst fears about the blurry lines between “humans” and “animals” in the world of Pluggers. Finally, there’s the content of that thought ballon: Punxsutawney Phil feels like he’s done this before, implying that he’s stuck in the same hellish time loop that ensnared Bill Murray in the 1993 film Groundhog Day, only he doesn’t have access to the possibility of the redemptive love that freed Murray’s character. Real grim stuff!

Dennis the Menace, 2/2/20

Not only does this panel feature Dennis engaging in actually menacing behavior — and with malice aforethought! it’s menace in the first degree! — but it also features a movie theater worker who isn’t some teenager who can laugh this off as a story to tell his buddies because fuck this stupid job anyway, but a man who looks like he’s in late middle age, probably lost his full-time job due to outsourcing or computers or apps, who can even keep track, and who took a minimum wage job to put food on the table, just while he’s looking for other work, just so he can keep a little dignity. But it’s hard, man. It’s hard to hold onto your dignity when they make you wear that hat, and it’s even hard when you have to deal with little shits like this. Real grim stuff!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/2/20

Ha ha, it’s funny because … Hootin’ Holler, economically impoverished and physically isolated, has only one medical professional serving the community, and it turns out he’s a fraud? And nobody cares? I’ve said it before, but: real grim stuff!