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Blondie, 11/14/23

I confess that I find the idea of a butcher who thinks about individual animals (whose carcasses he plans to eventually sell to people who want to eat them) as if they were sports prospects, to the extent that he knows their detailed stats, to be kind of charming. That’s why I’m profoundly disappointed that the final punchline involves the fake “MPG” stat, which sounds like a car thing, when they coud’ve used a fake sports thing. It’s all about the execution, buddy, and you screwed it up!

Six Chix, 11/14/23

Oh, I guess these space aliens are a recurring Six Chix bit now. Today we learn that, while these futuristic beings have evolved beyond our primitive views on gender, they are here to remind us that having a big juicy ass transcends the binary.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/13/23

You know, at first I thought this was about the eternal struggle between the modern scientific method, as represented by Doc Pritchart and his flatlander medical degree, and the ancient, chthonic folk wisdom of the Holler, as represented by Granny Creeps and her cave full of potions. But then I realized that Doc is probably just trying to stop Snuffy from getting poisoned. He’s right to worry! Who the hell knows what’s in that stuff she’s going to give him!

Pluggers, 11/13/23

Look, Pluggers, I get that you’re a comic whose whole thing is that you take submissions from your readers who are, by definition, pluggers, and pluggers absolutely love to forward emails consisting of jokes that they themselves did not write to their friends and loved ones, but I feel like maybe you should Google those submitted jokes to make sure they aren’t from, say, Cool Funny Quotes Dot Com’s collection of quotes by Anonymous or a weirdly padded blog post on Grumpy Fuckers Dot Com written by “Royston Butterscotch” or a magnet you can buy from Fem Power Gifts by Getbullish or X, the website formerly known as Twitter before you go to the trouble of illustrating them with anthropomorphic chickens.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/13/23

It doesn’t count as “dramatic tension” per se, but for weeks now I’ve been really unable to tell whether or not Mud is supposed to be sincere about the Mirakle Method or not. I guess he believes both that the Method can improve your life and that people are rational economic actors who always have access to the full information they need to make spending decisions that will never regret. Buzzy, though? Buzzy seems shady. Feel like Buzzy’s gonna get forcibly Mirakl’d in the not so distant future, i.e., he’ll be weeping openly as he contemplates his own personal swingset on the moon.

Gasoline Alley, 11/13/23

I often have fun on this blog trying to figure out where exactly various syndicated newspaper strips take place. But, Gasoline Alley? Never really cared to put the energy into it, to be honest with you all. Good thing, too, because all I had to do is wait it out for a while until today, when the strip tells us the characters all live near Charlotte, North Carolina. Who would’ve guessed? Not me, I admit, but as noted I wouldn’t have tried very hard.

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Blondie, 11/12/23

You ever notice how most of the women in Blondie have pretty normal-looking eyes but most of them men have these inky black stretched out ovals that take up half the height of their skulls? Honestly, despite years of reading this strip, I really hadn’t, until they decided to do a whole Sunday strip where the premise is that Dagwood just had his pupils dilated at optometrist, and now it’s all I can think about — which, honestly, is more appealing to dwell on than “ho ho, Dagwood would certainly be horny, if he could see better,” so I’m not complaining.

Mary Worth, 11/12/23

Having been fortified by a Mary Worth pep talk, Keith has dug deep into his Marine training and is going to fight for a decent, meaningful relationship with Kitty and then his daughter, no matter how fraught these conversations get or how hard he has to tr– oh, wait, what’s this, he got halfway through his apology and then Kitty was like “Oh, sorry I was so mean, let’s have a decent, meaningful relationship going forward. My treat! We’ll have lunch and I’ll explain how you can make friends with our daughter. Don’t worry, it won’t be difficult.” Problem solved, everyone! Problem sovled.

Six Chix, 11/12/23

Actually, Tom, I think what they’d say is that it’s been thousands of years since the civilization of their Builders passed away and not once since have they been bedewed with sacrificial blood. They’re thirsty! So thirsty! They’re an ancient megalithic monument, so they definitely don’t know what TripAdvisor is, but they know what human blood tastes like and they miss it terribly.

Dustin, 11/12/23

I’m kind of burned out on raging against Dustin but I do want to point out that Dustin’s parents — or, I guess more accurately, the people who write the strip from Dustin’s parents’ point of view — think getting Doordash/Grubhub delivery involves calling somebody. Jokes on you, dummies! Kids today are even less motivated than you think!