Beetle Bailey, 9/28/19
I don’t know why, but I find it hilarious that the vendor is walking away from his hot dog cart as he counts his money. Sarge is going to finish off the hot dogs, drink all the ketchup and mustard, then eat the cart itself, presumably using the umbrella to pick his teeth.
Six Chix, 9/28/19
“Probably makes your job sound like a real downer, huh? You find a lot of dead bodies in your line of work? Gross.”
Six Chix, 9/17/19
I want to pass over the actual joke at the core of today’s Six Chix (ha ha, moms sure love wine, amiright) and actually get into the visual shorthand being deployed here to establish that this is, in fact, a high-powered businessman, which, no matter what else I say about it, I have to admit that it worked, because we can all agree this is supposed to be a high-powered businessman, right? Anyway, our high-powered businessman is wearing a grey suit, obviously; he’s also wearing what appears to be a backpack with that suit, which more and more people are doing nowadays, but he’s also carrying a briefcase, because that’s a more universal high-powered businessman signifier, I guess. He’s also heading down into the subway, to establish he’s in New York City, the Big Apple, the nexus of all high-powered businessman energy (I will refrain from going on at great insufferable length about how the A, D, F, 1, 3, and 6 lines do not intersect anywhere). Finally, he’s yelling into his phone, which is a thing that high-powered businessmen do, the way they get things done. Who exactly is he ordering wine from? Is this a thing you can do in New York: order wine, over the phone? I’m definitely not high-powered enough to know!
(UPDATE: I 100% read the old woman in the background as just walking by on the sidewalk, which I think is fair given that her body language is not that different from the other dude on the sidewalk, and she was small because she’s a little further away, but I think commenters are right that she’s supposed to be the mother in question and … tiny? And strapped to his back? Like a …baby would be? Jesus, this fucking strip.)
Family Circus, 9/17/19
This isn’t just another Dolly malapropism, folks: PJ’s a robot! The older Keane Kids are biological units, but, I think we can all agree, those experiments were failures. PJ’s the next generation: cleaner, more efficient. He’s the future.
Judge Parker, 9/16/19
OK, let me let you in on some “Hollywood insider” information: I’m afraid that spending three days telling a couple of unrepped aspiring screenwriters your convoluted life story of spying and betrayal does not mean that the movie that’s going to exonerate you will be opening nationwide in time for awards season. I’m not sure how often along the long, winding path to production April’s gonna need to blow back into town to threaten someone with a gun: when our gals try to get an agent? At meetings with Netflix execs who see it more as a series? When they get the first round of producer notes telling them the protagonist needs to be more likable? This could be a lot more work than she’s bargained for, and she might want to look into getting an apartment in LA.
Six Chix, 9/16/19
I honestly appreciate to work put into actually making the grawlixes look like real physical objects, but to me it has the downside of trying to read them as a rebus and figure out what the swear word is supposed to be. “Screw poop”? “Screwy shit”? “Screw turd”? I feel like I’m so close, but not quite there.
Hi and Lois, 9/16/19
Hell yeah, Trixie feels good about how she looks and does not feel constrained by the gender binary. You go, kiddo!
Shoe, 9/16/19
It took me a few seconds to see the flowerpot that Biz is holding in panel two here, and so I parsed “bouquet” in the sense of “odor” or “smell” and assumed that the poor old man had the literal small of death on him. Like, just the odor of an embalmed corpse that he couldn’t get out of his nose. Anyway, let’s all have a fun week, everyone!