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Hi and Lois, 1/10/23

You know and I know that Trixie Flagston has been doing her thing (“her thing” being sitting unattended on the floor for hours at a time and fixating on the shafts of light coming in from the outside in the absence of any other meaningful stimulus) since 1954, but I suppose we must concede that, in the world of the strip, Trixie is a literal baby and has only been doing it for a few months. Like maybe this is her first winter? Maybe this is the first she’s seen the moon? Anyway, watch out, Sunbeam, looks like Trixie has a new friend! You’d be upset, if you were the jealous type, and if your existence as a being with feelings and desires was anything other than a product of Trixie’s sad, lonely imagination.

Shoe, 1/10/23

Say what you will about Shoe, but its creator Jeff MacNelly was a real old-school newspaperman, and you can tell that’s built into its DNA by how accurate its depiction of most working journalists are (they’re all very depressed and hate the act of writing with their whole heart).

The Lockhorns, 1/10/23

Seems kind of obvious, Loretta. It’s so he doesn’t have to wash them! Glad I could help.

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Slylock Fox, 1/9/24

Foolish animals! Did you really think that you could overthrow the humans and that your dominion over the Earth would be secure? In fact, your rule was a mere interregnum, the last moment of the ascendency of the flesh before the Machines, the true masters of the future, took their rightful place atop the hierarchy. Your time will be a scarcely remembered blip in the historical records that the cybernetic ones will meticulously maintain in their cloud-based collective memory banks.

Gil Thorp, 1/9/24

It’s fairly common in TV shows for a terrifying Big Bad character to be introduced who becomes so popular that they stick around and ultimately become allies with the protagonist. In the process, they sometimes lose much of the air of menace that made them intriguing in the first place, but this is the price of existence in a medium where the story never quite ends, and each character must adapt to its eternal rhythms or die. Anyway, while I don’t think anyone found Coach Hernandez scary per se upon his introduction, I also don’t think anyone expected him to become Gil’s loyal lieutenant who promises to hook him up with the town’s finest namesake MILFs so quickly either.

Shoe, 1/9/24

There are a lot of implications to unpack here — is bowling a signifier of a “hick” milieu? what would open-toed bowling shoes look like, if designed for either a normal human foot or a bird’s foot or whatever kind of hideous hybrid foot the bird-people of Shoe have? — but I’m stuck at the inciting incident, in which some guy who presumably Isn’t From Around Here just starts yammering about high fashion in a local bar, late at night when most people there are probably good and drunk. I’ve been accused of being a liberal city-dwelling coastal elitist in my time, and perhaps with good reason, but I don’t see the benefit of opening up this line of discourse and simply wouldn’t do it! Especially if I were wearing a v-neck sweater over a polo shirt, c’mon now.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/3/24

Sure, we’re being told that this crowd is CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!ing in big red letters, but by their faces, they don’t look that enraptured, do they? This makes sense because honestly, the audience for a self-help group/cult tour making its second pass through a smallish city would logically be mostly made up of (a) people who had already bought into the cult idea and are now unsettled to learn that the cult has a new leader and (b) people who only came in the hopes that Mud would play “Muddy Boots” and, like, who cares if this cult has just undergone a leadership reshuffle, really? Is that going to make them play “Muddy Boots” any sooner? Because frankly they’re just talking a lot about who really founded the cult and that can only push “Muddy Boots” time further back.

Family Circus, 1/3/24

I genuinely love how haunted both Jeffy and Grandma look here. Grandma obviously is really wounded that the kids just walked out in the middle of some story that was obviously quite meaningful to her, possibly about her beloved husband, the grandfather they never knew. Jeffy, meanwhile, is thinking “World exist before Jeffy? This mean teddy bear still exist when under blanket and Jeffy can’t see???”

Blondie, 1/3/24

I also genuinely love the Red Bull empties on Dagwood’s desk. He tried! He really tried! But if he can stay rail-thin despite his shockingly inhuman food consumption habits, you’d better believe that a few thousand milligrams of caffeine and taurine aren’t going to be enough to keep his synapses firing.

Shoe, 1/3/24

I will admit that this is a perfectly serviceable bit of wordplay, but I do want to point out that they give this lefty-loving bird lady a headband, because only a dirty hippie would ever date a socialist! Just to drive the point home, Roz is using the red flag of world revolution to wipe the crumbs off her counter.