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This lady is taking her LIFE into her own hands here, talking to Gertie like that

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Gearhead Gertie, 4/4/24

I really enjoy the fact that about half of Gearhead Gertie strips are like “here’s a recent NASCAR story or controversy, spelled out in detail for idiots like me who don’t follow NASCAR,” and the other half of them are like “Gertie encounters someone who doesn’t sufficiently enjoy or respect NASCAR and that person just immediately goes to the top of her shit list, and she spends the rest of the week seething about it.”

Beetle Bailey, 4/4/24

My Great-Uncle Stan developed alopecia when he was in the Army, and family lore was that he got a big settlement from the military due to some hush-hush reasons involving some kind of experimental weapons program. I don’t know if that’s really true, but I remember him fondly as an extremely jovial guy who lived in a fun retirement community near Palm Springs that in retrospect was definitely the site of multiple swingers parties every night, so it’s nice to see him getting some representation in Beetle Bailey.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/4/24

Ha ha, yes, this honestly is good advice to give to a child growing up in a town full of notorious violent criminals!

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Old blogger yells at cloud

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Blondie, 4/3/24

Everyone makes fun of young people for being addicted to social media, but the truth is that old people are also addicted to social media. Which is fine! It’s designed to be addictive! But it’s an underexplored cultural phenomenon and honestly I’m glad that Blondie offers insight into that world. Today’s strip makes the misstep of putting Dagwood’s teen son Alexander front and center, though. Look, I too am constantly annoyed by the “reels” that Instagram and Facebook put into my feed. But I’m a 49 year old man! The teens today are not on Facebook and barely on Instagram. They’re being annoyed by new irritating features on some other site and/or app entirely, probably TikTok but also maybe something I haven’t even heard of yet. And why should I have? Whatever it is, it’s quite frankly none of my business.

Daddy Daze, 4/3/24

Oh, wow, big news: we all suspected the Daddy Daze baby was going to kill the Daddy Daze daddy one of these days, and now it’s finally happening! Not sure I would’ve guessed that he was going to do an elaborate pseudo-legal ritual beforehand, but you know what, that tracks.

Beetle Bailey, 4/3/24

Sure, I make fun of how newspaper comics are hidebound and traditional all the time, but some traditions I like, and one of them is that Beetle Bailey should never, ever know what “horny” feels like. That’s General Halftrack’s job! C’mon now.

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Sacred Tuesday

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Gasoline Alley, 4/2/24

I realize that a lot of fiction essentially consists of making up a guy to get mad at so you can be happy when he loses, but I feel like Walt and Skeezix seething with rage and despair because a town name change has been proposed by a guy named Elbert Imeswine is a little much. He’s not going to do it, guys, and he’s not going to get elected! This is the sort of thing that wouldn’t happen in real life and extremely wouldn’t happen in a strip that has the same name as the town in question, especially when all the strip has keeping it alive as a media property is the fact that its name is deeply engrained enough in our collective consciousness as to elicit vague feelings of recognition from people who have never read it, or read a newspaper.

Pardon My Planet, 4/2/24

Halos are derived in origin from an artistic practice in many cultures of depicting holy or divine figures with a glowing circle behind their heads, implying an internal radiance. Things got weird as artists learned how to create more naturalistic perspective in their work, and these circles became a sort of floating disk (as in this 15th century painting) before evolving into the glowing hula hoop we know and love today. Anyway, it’s nice to see the disk form making a comeback in today’s Pardon My Planet, but that’s about the only thing that’s nice about it. Hey, Pardon My Planet, you familiar with Matthew 22:30? “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven”? Heresy much?

Pluggers, 4/2/24

Oh my gosh, this plugger seems to have discovered the Holy Grail! I’m sure that newspaper includes information that will transform our knowledge of history and religious studies; commodities prices are probably among the less splashy bits of data it contains, but they’re still important for helping us understand the time period.