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Dustin, 11/15/24

Yes, sir, Dustin sure is a strip where one of the main characters is a lawyer! Ha ha, that is undeniable. And “class action”? You’d better believe that’s something a lawyer would say. Does that make this strip funny? Well. That’s neither here nor there. I think we can say all the elements are there, though! Ha ha!

Hagar the Horrible, 11/15/24

The thing about Hagar is that he’s a literal savage, a vicious pirate and murderer. Everyone is terrified of him! He’s a violent man who feels no remorse!

Pluggers, 11/15/24

Pluggers are covered with bruises and various injuries. It’s actually really disheartening. And they’re old and their health isn’t great, so they don’t heal as quickly as they used to.

Shoe, 11/15/24

Wait, do the Shoe bird-people do meetings by Zoom? That implies a global pandemic in their recent past … but what could that be [Googles “bird flu,” accidentally clicks on the “News” tab] oh god damn it

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Beetle Bailey, 10/2/24

Hello, faithful readers! You might recall that last week I opined that Beetle Bailey had abandoned the spirit, though not the letter, of Miss Buxley Wednesday by producing technically Buxley-inclusive content that nobody could possibly be aroused by. Well, it seems that the bigwigs at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC have listened to my reasoned critique and delivered two panels of Miss Buxley in all her miniskirted glory. Sure, she’s as crudely drawn as ever, but she’s waving her arms around frantically and yelling right next to a laser printer that’s going crazy and spewing out paper, and I’m reasonably sure that a sizable minority of you could talk yourselves into getting off to that, if you really put in the work.

Pluggers, 10/2/24

I had always assumed that actual short-order cooks are plugger short-order cooks? I mean, I guess I haven’t been keeping tabs on the hierarchies, but do you mean to tell me that this underpaid, manually demanding profession is coastal elitist-coded now? That real pluggers are at home seething with class resentment at short-order cooks because they use fancy stoves to cook? By god, pluggers just eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and they like it! They don’t even toast the bread! Do you toast the bread, like some kind of communist? I’d blame Hulu’s hit show The Bear for this change in attitude, as it shows short-order cooks having aspirations beyond their station, but (a) no plugger subscribes to a “streaming service” and (b) if they did, as horrible man-animal chimeras, their primary reaction to the show would be confusion that nobody on it is actually a bear.

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Pluggers, 9/23/24

An oft-noted source of malaise in American life is a rise of loneliness, as “third spaces” — places where people socialize that aren’t home or work — decline, and more and more people spend all their time with immediate family, coworkers — or, as they age, themselves. My new crackpot theory is that this explains why individual Plugger entries have gotten increasingly weird and idiosyncratic over the years that I’ve read the strip. They used to be the sort of corny and relatable content that emerged from consensus as you and your buddies griped or joked about life’s little foibles at the bar or on the job site. But now? Now that you took your pension and your wife has died and the VFW hall has closed, now that mostly you just sit on the couch with the TV turned on way too loud, so you can hear it and also can’t really think, which is maybe the whole point? Well, now who knows what your old pals who you exchange occasional texts with do. Do they mute the TV before they reply to your text? Probably, right? You do it, so it stands to reason that they do too. Maybe that’s why they haven’t replied to your text yet. Maybe they’re just waiting for their show to end so they can focus some attention on it. That’s probably it.

Gasoline Alley, 9/23/24

In addition to being obviously annoying, Rufus and Joel are also uncanny, in the sense that they alone among the cast stay the same age even as everyone ages around them. Are they truly human at all, or are they strange visitors from the fae realms? Well, today’s strip at least establishes that Rufus was in fact pushed down a human birth canal, which may be more information than any of us ever wanted, but now we have it.

Shoe, 9/23/24

I love the fact that the Perfesser’s eyes are closed here. He’s not just daydreaming about these culinary delights: he appears to be deep in the act of prayer, as if he’s trying to manifest them. This probably hurts Roz’s feelings, as she runs the restaurant where he’s currently sitting and from which he could presumably simply order them.