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Family Circus, 8/21/21

I have already shamefully admitted that I kind of like Billy when he’s being surly and aggressively ignorant, so this this panel is a real treat. The best part, though is how bored and antsy everyone else looks as well. Even Daddy is yawning while he’s trying to read about erosion or whatever! Billy’s just saying what we’re all thinking!

Gil Thorp, 8/21/21

“I just turned down a boring-ass sports story, which is normally the sort of thing we’d print, but it wasn’t a boring-ass high school sports story, so I figured it wasn’t right for us, even though — and I can’t emphasize this enough — we’re supposed to be a real grown-up newspaper, not the high school journalism club or anything like that. Anyway, it’s Saturday, so I assume there’s a new plot starting next week! Maybe it’ll be high school sports related!”

Pluggers, 8/21/21

Pluggers have no idea what time it is or where they are or where they’re going or when they’re supposed to get there, and that’s OK! Their journey is valid and I respect it.

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Blondie, 8/7/21

Elmo’s friend — and look, probably, somewhere deep within Blondie HQ, there’s a whole character chart with a name and a backstory for this kid, but he’ll always be just plain “Elmo’s friend” to me, like if you try to tell me what his actual canon name is, I will simply refuse to listen — is visibly upset in the second panel, and honestly, who can blame him. Elmo’s relationship with Dagwood is weird and off-putting! “Who is this strange adult man?” he seems to be thinking. “Why did we interrupt his nap? Why is he standing here while we’re about to get into the pool? Should I tell my parents about this?”

Pluggers, 8/7/21

At first I, drawing on my own incipient experience of pluggerdom, assumed this was a joke about creaky backs and hips, and then considered that it was probably a much less charitable fat joke. But I would love it to be just a kind of general plugger musing on mortality. “Not sure I want to sit down,” the bear-man thinks, eyeing the chair warily. “Never know when the old ticker’s gonna give out. Do I want it to be in that chair? Not sure it’s dignified enough.”

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Baby Blues, 8/4/21

You ever see a tiny, almost invisible piece of writing that just ruins your whole day? That happened to me today, and that piece of writing was the “®” after Barbie’s name in panel one here. Why did they feel a need to do this? Why does Barbie (registration number 0810106) get a ® and not Spider-Man (registration number 3553440)? At first I thought this might be because Barbie was in origin a doll, which is a physical product, whereas Spider-Man was in origin a literary character, but then I checked a recent Spider-Man movie poster and:

which, fine, that’s a ™ and not a ®, but the comic didn’t use ™ either, so what the heck? What the heck, man? Are Mattel’s lawyers somehow even scarier and more litigious than Disney’s? And how is Zoe pronouncing this legal glyph, huh? How is she pronouncing it?

Pluggers, 8/4/21

At least today’s Pluggers is straightforward enough. Pluggers hoard napkins, because they’re thrifty! But wait. Wait. Weren’t we just assured, a mere two weeks ago, that pluggers don’t use napkins to keep themselves clean while eating? So what are they hoarding them for, exactly? This makes the “someday” in today’s dialogue all the more poignant. The dog-plugger has thousands of napkins loosely piled up in the guest room, and every time the chicken-lady begs him to let her throw them out because they’re an “eyesore” and also a “fire hazard,” the dog-man gets real anxious and just keeps saying “No, they might come in handy! Someday!”

Crankshaft, 8/4/21

Just to end on a positive note, I enjoy the crosshatching at the right end of the panel here tipping you off to the fact that this is happening at night. Just Crankshaft going door to door at 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, who even knows, disturbing people’s peaceful evenings by thrusting a wheelbarrow chock-full of zucchini at them. Good stuff!