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Pluggers and Shoe, 6/6/23

How are the various human-animal hybrid monstrosities of the Jeff MacNelly Extended Universe grappling with the concept of the “beer belly”? Well, Pluggers would like you to know that they do not guzzle alcoholic beer like some lout; instead they get all the stimulation they could need from a combination of sugars and starches that every doctor on earth would look at and beg, “Please, rethink this.” Shoe, meanwhile, is confident that its core readership of elderly shut-ins has never been a store that sells novelty t-shirts and are unaware that they can find them online, so they’ll never realize that this is a shamelessly ripped off joke.

Slylock Fox, 6/6/23

Ah, here’s a delightful scene from the closing days of the Animal Revolution, in which one of few remaining human holdouts is cornered in a tent deep in the desert, while a grotesquely enhanced scorpion waits eagerly to sting him to death. However, as the snake-vulture interaction at the right of the panel illustrates, the animals are beginning to turn on one another, which explains why they failed to “finish the job” and Slick Smitty and Count Weirdly remain at large.

Gasoline Alley, 6/6/23

Oh, hey, how’s the tale of Rufus’s head injury going? Well, he’s unconscious and unresponsive, and emergency services are unable to reach him, so, not great, really! Not great at all!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/29/23

You might think that the inhabitants of Hootin’ Holler would object to the fact their only clergyman is a grifter and fraud. But in truth, for these rural folk, the niceties of organized religion are of little interest, as their spiritual world is dominated by essentially pagan beliefs in signs given by nature and the practice of folk magic.

Dennis the Menace, 5/29/23

That’s not to give followers of monotheistic creeds too much credit, of course; many, like Dennis, will menace generations of sophisticated theologians by simply treating God as a source of apotropaic power, a shortcut to get out of a bind rather than a mystery to contemplate.

Blondie, 5/29/23

Speaking of mysteries, do you think Dagwood has lied to these kids and told him that he’s a combat veteran, so they’re leaving him alone to give him time to contemplate his fallen comrades? Or is their attitude just something like “Well, I guess he respects the troops, so we won’t fuck with him and make his life miserable … today, anyway.”

Shoe, 5/29/23

CONFIRMED: traitors to birdkind in the Shoe universe are punished by ritual execution and cannibalism.

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Shoe, 5/26/23

I know that restaurants generically calling side dishes like potatoes or rice or whatever “starches” was a thing at one point, but is it still a thing? I’m sure someone’s going to be like “there goes Josh the coastal elitist again, who only goes to hip, Instagram-savvy restaurants when real Americans in the heartland are happy to order a side starch whenever they go out to eat,” but the joke’s on you because the hip restaurants have started eschewing that bland Instagram aesthetic and are pivoting to TikTok, which rewards motion and video so now they’re doing frankly gross shit like serving dishes where the waiter breaks it open for you and cheese gushes out everywhere. Where was I? Oh, right, I was talking about the phrase “with your meal, you’re allowed a starch,” which honestly doesn’t seem that appetizing to me, and I don’t think Roz saying it with come-hither eyes while holding the menu three feet away from the Perfesser really helps.

Dick Tracy, 5/26/23

Dick Tracy is doing a plot about how boring film-themed villain Silver Nitrate is in prison, and in case you were wondering how he’s doing: he’s doing pretty well! He knows who to avoid now, and it’s the other Dick Tracy villains who tell him, explicitly, that they don’t want to hang out with him. Honestly seems pretty straightforward!

Beetle Bailey, 5/26/23

A group of Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC staff sit around a table, sweating. They’ve just broken open the “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY (THE KIND WHERE YOU RUN OUT OF BEETLE BAILEY JOKES) BREAK GLASS” case that’s been hanging on the wall of the office for as long as anyone can remember. Inside is a single scrap of paper, on which someone has written four words that terrify them: “Sgt. Lugg gets horny.”