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Shoe, 10/19/23

I’ve complained about this before, but Shoe has a long-established setting where the various bird characters get drunk and hit on one another, and it’s the fern bar, so seeing them drinking and smoking and flirting at Roz’s Diner in the middle of the day seems off to me. Since the primary audience for this strip, like all newspaper comic strips, is vaguely disgruntled baby boomers, it’s possible that this is supposed to be a commentary on the fact that everyone is “working” form home now and you can’t even enjoy a nice plate of meatloaf for lunch at your local greasy spoon without having to watch a bunch of kids who make “apps” for a living get drunk and try to have sex with each other, which is probably why they’re charging so much for the meatloaf these days. It’s also possible that the Shoe brain trust simply lost the image files for the fern bar background and they don’t feel like drawing it again.

Mary Worth, 10/19/23

I wonder if Keith is finding his ex using the same public data that led his secret daughter right to his apartment, or if he still has access to police databases that he’s wildly misusing? Either way, I’m not complaining, because it’s very funny seeing this guy with cartoonishly beefy forearms daintily typing away on a little Macbook.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/19/23

Welp, it seems our Mud/Rene kidnapping plot really did just kind of end in the middle of the week, which means we have a few days to spend on the Morgans’ incredibly boring family life, I guess? These kids sound like a real handful; they’re probably too young for the Mirakle Method, but if you stick a screen playing “Li’l Fergus” videos in front of them, they’ll be lulled into ignorable silence at least.

Beetle Bailey, 10/19/23

I think Beetle’s response here is kind of funny, as it’s fairly obvious that he’s sticking a pin in that doll and I assume Killer wants to know what he’s doing in a much bigger-picture sense. Anyway, I was going to do a whole riff about how it’s surprising that someone as lazy as Beetle was willing to put in the work to learn the cultural and spiritual practices of the voudou religion, but it turns out that so-called “voodoo dolls” aren’t used by practitioners of voudou in either Haiti or Louisiana, so I guess his laziness is still in full effect. I’m impressed that he somehow got a really accurate Sarge doll, though.

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Dick Tracy, 10/18/23

Oh no! Why would you build a huge wing on the back of your mansion that has an entirely glass ceiling? Why, you’re just asking for someone to break through it and steal all your rare books in a daring heist! I swear, people don’t do any basic defensibility research before engaging in massive building projects anymore.

Beetle Bailey, 10/18/23

What with all the changes in social mores and tolerance over the past 30 to 50 years or so, you, the typical Beetle Bailey reader, are probably concerned: is it possible that Otto, the famous army dog, is a homosexual? Well, worry no more! He’s as straight as they come, and is attracted to human women, which is, uh, fine? We’ll say it’s fine.

Shoe, 10/18/23

The Perfesser is all gakked out on uppers and is now begging his connection for a little something to mellow him out. Seems a little edgy for a talking bird comic but what do I know!

Dennis the Menace, 10/18/23

“But she’s really worked hard to improve for this performance, and you can tell the audience is responding to it! I’m proud of her!”

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Beetle Bailey, 10/12/23

I don’t know if General Halftrack’s rambling comeback here is supposed to be funny (it isn’t) or if it’s supposed to indicate that he’s flustered and not very smart so the only comeback he can unleash is this unfunny word salad (which also isn’t funny even in a meta way). Either way, not good. I know that a lot of times I take my “Comics Curmudgeon” mission as a chance to riff on some intellectual or social or artistic theme, but sometimes I just gotta point to a strip and say “You didn’t do so hot today, friend.”

Shoe, 10/12/23

Someday I’m going to be senile and in a home somewhere and will have forgotten the names and faces of everyone I’ve ever loved, but certain bits of terrible knowledge will just be burned into my decaying brain forever. “Birds and other animals with cloacae don’t really have sphincters like mammals and just pee and poop freely all day” is one of those facts that will never leave me, and I’m reasonably sure I learned it while researching a post about Shoe. All these bird-people should be wearing adult diapers, is what I’m saying.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/12/23

I’m not going to say that this long, shaggy-dog Mud apology tour/Mirakle Method storyline would be redeemed if it ends with Truck summarily firing Buck as his agent and taking on this criminal as an agent. But, like, I wouldn’t be mad about it, either.