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Shoe, 9/28/21

The obvious version of this joke would have the Professor deliver his first line looking at his desk at work, or maybe in his home office. But nope, instead he’s saying it while looking at his living room chair, and I assume that the “lots” he has to do involves catching up on various prestige television shows and finishing off yesterday’s pizza and snacks, which he’s blowing off to read about golf instead. A true legend of sloth!

Blondie, 9/28/21

I’ve never really gotten a handle on how old Elmo is supposed to be, exactly, but I refuse to acknowledge a scenario where he’s capable of drawing Mr. Dithers’s and Dagwood’s faces (side note: there is no reason for Elmo to have ever met or even seen a picture of Mr. Dithers) with such precision, and yet be unable to properly write the letter E. I have to assume that he’s chosen a whimsical “childish” signature as part of his artistic #brand, which may explain why he’s placed (in-universe) photorealistic drawings on stick-figure bodies.

Beetle Bailey, 9/28/21

You’ve got to admit that “killed stateside by friendly fire” was always the most probably way for Beetle Bailey to die, just edging out “organ failure from repeated beatings from Sarge” and “slept too hard.”

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Dennis the Menace, 9/14/21

I am absolutely in love with the idea of Mr. Wilson’s identity as a jazz hepcat suddenly becoming another weak point that Dennis can use to send him into paroxysms of rage. I’m not sure which interpretation of today’s strip would be funnier: that Dennis was letting loose with some wild, atonal acid jazz when Mr. Wilson just wants to jam out to Dave Brubeck, or that Dennis was playing square, Lite FM Kenny G bullshit that Mr. Wilson thinks sullies the good name of jazz.

Gasoline Alley, 9/14/21

I do not care about the current Gasoline Alley storyline and refuse to explain even the basics to you, but I do love the final panel here, which in a more interesting world would be the capper of a storyline in which in adorable, aw-shucks talking bear finally answers for his crimes against humanity at the Hague.

Shoe, 9/14/21

“Ha ha, get it? But seriously, they keep running a bunch of tests but can’t figure out what’s wrong with me. They’re pretty sure I’m dying, though.”

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Shoe, 9/11/21

Spending too much energy thinking about world-building in newspaper comics is probably a waste of time, but [gestures at thousands of posts on this blog] that has certainly never stopped me before, and I feel like today’s Shoe offers us an interesting view into the weird sequence of physical/biological aberrations that led to the strip’s lived environment. Like, they live in the trees, like birds? Only they wear shoes and walk like people? I particularly appreciate the casual way the Perfesser holds onto that branch in panel two, exactly the way a person walking along a rounded log would, and exactly the way a bird hopping along a tree branch (who one would expect to have wings instead of hands, for one thing) wouldn’t. Anyway, I’m not one for biology defining destiny, but surely these mutations are the root cause of these poor birds developing unhealthy societal concepts like “phones” and “the 1970s.”

Mary Worth, 9/11/21

Hey remember when Saul used to be surly jerk who hated everyone and everything until Mary forced him, without his consent, to get in touch with his emotions? Well, it looks like he’s made it his mission to cajole people into doing the emotional work on their own, so they don’t find themselves tricked by Mary into doing it the hard way!