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Beetle Bailey, 3/24/17

I can’t stop looking at that weird little gadget (?) propped awkwardly on Killer’s pillow in panel one. It’s like someone drawing this realized that “uh, probably military hospitals use, like, advanced medical technology now???” but wasn’t sure what exactly that might entail, so rather than just draw a groggy-soldier on a cot, they drew a groggy soldier on a cot with a cell-phone-sized black box hanging off the side of his pillow, like maybe it’s clipped on, I dunno. And it’s recording his … heartbeat or blood pressure, even though it’s not connected to him at all? Or his breathing? Maybe his breathing? All this high-tech business really gets in the way of a solid gag about how Killer’s “illness” is that he’d rather be on the beach, gambling and looking at tits.

Crankshaft, 3/24/17

Ha ha, yes, this is just another in an endless, soul-crushingly eternal series of “Crankshaft says the darndest things” gags, but wouldn’t it be great if some lady did give Ed a Trojan hearse for Christmas? Like, you know, a big black car with space in the back for a coffin, and Crankshaft accepts it thinking it’s an offering to the gods and brings it inside his walled fortress, but inside are dozens of hidden Achaean warriors, who emerge at night and wreak terrible destruction. I’d like to see this storyline depicted over a period of six to eight weeks, with particular focus on the lamentations.

Pluggers, 3/24/17

Welp, the bedroom eyes the she-plugger is flashing here seems to confirm something hinted at earlier: NCIS has such high ratings among the plugger set because it’s a Pavlovian sex trigger. Nobody actually watches it.

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Mary Worth, 3/23/17

Ahhhhhh yes, when it comes to finding bargains online, Toby sure knows how to pick them! Like the time she couldn’t find some boring-ass documentary for Ian at the video store so she had the brainstorm of ordering it online from enormoushop.com but then she got phished and criminal Canadians misused her card, which had literally zero consequences for her, but she was wracked with anxiety that Ian would leave her for her e-commerce incompetence, but it turned out that he didn’t, even though he hadn’t been particularly impressed by the documentary in the first place. What I’m trying to say is that Toby and Mary are going to go down to the Santa Royale docks where the special “low-cost cruise” is supposed to dock, only to have their organs harvested by the Serbian mob.

Crock, 3/23/17

Little Otis: still hanging out with Wadsworth the vulture, I guess? Anyway, today they’re talking about going to the mall (a vulture mall???) so that the boy can start forming romantic/sexual attachments to female vultures. Normally I think that kids today are far too sheltered, but I’m beginning to think that Otis’s parents should be providing a little more supervision in his life.

Dennis the Menace, 3/23/17

Demonstrating that the pious, simple maxims we repeat to each other and our children aren’t really compatible with the messy complexity of the human experience: definitely one of the most menacing things you can do.

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Hi and Lois, 3/22/17

Shoutout to Hi and Lois for jettisoning a “joke” or “punchline” here and instead choosing to depict one of its main characters going through an unspecified but apparently severe health crisis. Hi, sweating copiously but unable to keep warm no matter how many layers he puts on, mumbles “I can’t find any medicine in the medicine cabinet!”, his blurring vision leaving him incapable of reading the labels on any of the various medications available to him. Tomorrow: Hallucinations and/or death!

Gasoline Alley, 3/22/17

One of the things I like (“like”) about Gasoline Alley is that they introduce these new characters and just act like they’re beloved and that we should care about their weird, inscrutable motivations and emotions. So, Ruth, the besotted (?) office manager of beardy PA Chipper Wallet, has pretty much been a one-note character, that single note being how cheerfully dumb she is, and this has been offered up for our uncomplicated amusement, but now we’re supposed to feel bad because she knows she’s dumb and incapable of running the office by herself, no matter how brief Chipper’s absence. Anyway, if this burst of tears and associate hug ends up with the two of them sexing, I will be very, very disgusted.

Six Chix, 3/22/17

WHY IS THE CHIPMUNK WEARING GLASSES

WHY

WHYYYYYYY