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Blondie, 1/20/25

The joke here really ought to be that we all know that there are plenty of cereal varieties with marshmallows out there sold in boxes with colorful cartoon art on them, but Dagwood simply doesn’t encounter them anymore, because he’s an adult, plus (and this is where Blondie’s carefully neutral “Oh?” comes in) he doesn’t actually do the grocery shopping so he assumes that because he doesn’t see them, they don’t exist. But given Dagwood’s appetites and predilections, I find it very hard to believe that he doesn’t go to the grocery store daily, wandering the aisles in a sort of dazed mania. Anyway, I do like the box of adult cereal here, which features a picture of a boring middle aged guy with a blank facial expression eating cereal on it. You can almost hear him saying the popular catchphrase, “I am eating this cereal for breakfast, as an adult.”

Shoe, 1/20/25

I’m really liking the Perfesser’s goggle eyes of horror here. Sorry, buddy! You are not excused from single combat with Biz in the rough and tumble marketplace of ideas!

Mary Worth, 1/20/25

Wow, Dawn’s already learned about negging from Dirk, and now the lessons have moved on to gaslighting! Truly a wondrous journey of discovery awaits her.

Dennis the Menace, 1/20/25

Well, I mean, he’s celebrating this birthday and the only people at his “party” are his wife and the five-year-old neighbor kid who he fucking hates, so, yeah, I think the thrill of living is gone for Mr. Wilson generally, Dennis.

Family Circus, 1/20/25

OK, Thel, before you answer this, think carefully: has the children’s religious education to date covered Exodus 22:18?

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Shoe, 1/18/25

It’s true: closed captions aren’t just for the hearing impaired. They also help viewers in a variety of contexts where speech may be difficult to understand, allowing them to enjoy programs that they would otherwise have a hard time following. Thanks for the tip, Perfesser!

Pluggers, 1/18/25

It’s true: tofu doesn’t have much of a flavor itself, but it absorbs sauces and other flavors from whatever dish it’s in, so it’s an adaptable form of protein that works in a lot of different meals. Congrats on overcoming your culinary xenophobia and figuring this out, Bear-Man!

Marvin, 1/18/25

It’s honestly quite rude of Marvin to wait for me to publicly admit that it hasn’t really done many piss or shit jokes lately and then hit me with a piss joke at the end of the week. Anyway, I really like the implication here that, having been housebroken, Bitsy can never go back, not even in the most dire of circumstances. You don’t actually have to piss outside, Bitsy, if you have any courage!

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Mary Worth, 1/12/25

This Mary Worth storyline is sadly all too realistic in its depiction of emotional abuse and manipulation. But it’s extremely unrealistic in its depiction of someone who isn’t wearing her usual corrective lenses. I’m sorry, if Dawn’s vision is so bad that she’s just squirting ketchup all over the table in a vague attempt to season her fries, I refuse to believe she has any ability to see anything other than vague colors or shapes, or has any idea where she is or who she’s even talking to. I was also going to say that the transition that got us to “Duckgirl” isn’t realistic either, but I guess I need to keep in mind that Dirk is extremely stupid, so I’ll allow it for now.

Daddy Daze, 1/12/25

I swear that I am usually capable of processing a deliberate incongruity in the fictional world of a comic strip as a “joke,” but my least favorite instance of this is when an animal or some other entity that shouldn’t be able to read or write at all can, but is bad at it (probably the canonical version is the Far Side “CAT FUD” panel). That’s why I kind of approve of this strip, in which the Daddy Daze baby, who we are meant to understand is capable of advanced cognition that he communicates in a series of “ba”s, appears to have produced a professional-quality pamphlet, and hasn’t just handed over a piece of paper with squiggles all over it. Of course, you all know my theory that the baby is just a baby and the Daddy Daze daddy is insane, but nothing we see here precludes the possibility that the daddy produced the pamphlet himself in some kind of fugue state.

Hi and Lois, 1/12/25

Do you ever feel envious of Trixie, who lives outside the world of adult responsibilities and even childhood fears and enjoys a simple existence with her best friend, the light of the Sun itself? Well, it turns out that actually she perceives all sources of light and heat as separate conscious and jealous entities, and is constantly caught in their complex web of social relations as they jockey for status. Sounds real stressful, honestly, so maybe we should rethink our attitudes about her life.

Shoe, 1/12/25

I was about to make fun of Shoe for saying you can’t make money on the Internet, but then I remembered that he’s a newspaper editor, so he probably knows from pretty hard experience about not making money on the Internet.