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Beetle Bailey, 11/7/20

I guess the joke here is that Sarge is an ape-like brute who took Beetle’s first-panel retort as an invitation to pound him into a pulp in traditional Beetle Bailey fashion. But I’d like to imagine that in fact Sarge took Beetle to a zoo or gorilla sanctuary and threw him into an enclosure to be attacked, or perhaps released a gorilla he keeps captive for just such occasions, because he is a very literal ape-like brute.

Hi and Lois, 11/7/20

Faithful readers of this blog know that I’m extremely on board with Hi and Lois reclaiming Thirsty’s original characterization as a sad, desperate alcoholic. I’m sad that the colorists of today’s strip, apparently unaware of the comics’ rich history of using alcohol-inflamed rhinopehyma as a visual gag, spent all their red-yellow gradient efforts on the fall leaves and not on Thirsty’s cross-hatched nose. Because Hi is trash-talking his neighbor and best (only?) friend well within hearing distance, I assume that Thirsty is fully passed out in that chair.

Pluggers, 11/7/20

I am dying to know the relationship between this strip and the infamous “Rhino-Man Hocks His TV” panel, not least because that appears to be the identical model of television, which was decades out of date even when Rhino-Man hocked it back in 2006. I don’t know if we’re supposed to understand that Dog-Man is superior to Rhino-Man in fixiness, the quality most valued in a plugger after down-home smugness and sexism, or if this is in fact the exact same TV, which the guy at the pawn shop gave Dog-Man at no charge just to free up some space on his shelves.

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Pluggers, 10/15/20

Pluggers are lonely. So lonely! Who will talk to pluggers? Well, maybe if they just rifle through this seven-year-old phone book — the last one ever delivered to them — and see if any of the names ring a bell, they’ll find someone who will talk to them. They do this every nine months ago when everything just gets to be too much, and every time fewer and fewer people answer.

Crock, 10/15/20

Look, I’m not saying that I want characters in comic strips to be photorealistic humans. Far from it! That would ruin the fun of comics! I’m just saying if your the design of your one of your characters is an undifferentiated dumpling of flesh, whose protruding lower lip sits immediately above his hairy chest with no obvious jaw between thorax and brainpan, maybe it’s best that you don’t ask the reader to contemplate what the phrase “from the neck up” might mean to such a being.

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Folks, sometimes you look at the day’s comics and … you just can’t think of much to say about them! In fact, sometimes the most you can muster is, like the title says: three sentences about three panels.

Dennis the Menace, 10/14/20

Dennis said a cuss!

The Lockhorns, 10/14/20

Leroy’s mechanic talks about his car like it’s a human body — and because this is The Lockhorns, it’s not in a sexy way, like you might expect.

Pluggers, 10/14/20

“This right here is a plugger chat room,” pluggers say smugly, apparently not realizing that no non-pluggers have used or even thought about “chat rooms” for more than a decade.