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Gearhead Gertie, 10/3/24

Now, I might be an Ivy League-educated coastal elitist, but the Ivy League school I attended was in fact located in the Finger Lakes, and I know that they’ll just let any schmo drive on at least one NASCAR track, so I assume this is probably true elsewhere? Not going to bother researching that, I’m just saying, this panel is predicated on the idea that Gertie is doing something crazy when in fact she’s doing something very normal for a NASCAR obsessive such as herself. I don’t usually take sides in comic strip marital spats but her husband needs to chill out!

Blondie, 10/3/24

Blondie is a strip I very much never think of as “visually interesting,” so I do have to give props to Dagwood’s thought balloon in the first panel, which wraps around the door to match his imagined sausage garland placement. On the other hand, his wink is pure nightmare fuel, and the idea of “pizza-shaped pillows” … that’s just round! That’s not epic at all! Look, Alexander, there’s a pizza-shaped pillow on the couch right next to you!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/3/24

You know, if Mud Mountain only pretended to be the first guy in history who ever had his personality genuinely improved after joining an obviously fake scam self-help cult, just so he could lull Truck into complacency and get an invitation to perform together again, at which point he plans to pull off his patented move — pretending to shit his pants on stage — well, I for one will have no choice but to respect it.

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Beetle Bailey, 10/2/24

Hello, faithful readers! You might recall that last week I opined that Beetle Bailey had abandoned the spirit, though not the letter, of Miss Buxley Wednesday by producing technically Buxley-inclusive content that nobody could possibly be aroused by. Well, it seems that the bigwigs at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC have listened to my reasoned critique and delivered two panels of Miss Buxley in all her miniskirted glory. Sure, she’s as crudely drawn as ever, but she’s waving her arms around frantically and yelling right next to a laser printer that’s going crazy and spewing out paper, and I’m reasonably sure that a sizable minority of you could talk yourselves into getting off to that, if you really put in the work.

Pluggers, 10/2/24

I had always assumed that actual short-order cooks are plugger short-order cooks? I mean, I guess I haven’t been keeping tabs on the hierarchies, but do you mean to tell me that this underpaid, manually demanding profession is coastal elitist-coded now? That real pluggers are at home seething with class resentment at short-order cooks because they use fancy stoves to cook? By god, pluggers just eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and they like it! They don’t even toast the bread! Do you toast the bread, like some kind of communist? I’d blame Hulu’s hit show The Bear for this change in attitude, as it shows short-order cooks having aspirations beyond their station, but (a) no plugger subscribes to a “streaming service” and (b) if they did, as horrible man-animal chimeras, their primary reaction to the show would be confusion that nobody on it is actually a bear.

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Gil Thorp, 10/1/24

Ah, well, it seems that Gil’s airborne lovefest under old artist Rod Whigham was some kind of hallucination he was having during a massive cardiac event on the sideline of a football game, and now, under new artist Rachel Merrill, he lingers comatose in a hospital, kept alive by machines the size of a 1950s mainframe computer. Anyway, this is a perfect time for Keri to confess to bulimia, I guess, and just like the time in Mary Worth when Dr. Jeff’s drippy daughter accepted her cop boyfriend’s proposal when he was in a coma, this will only lead to positive outcomes.

Gasoline Alley, 10/1/24

Gasoline Alley will never try to confuse us with abrupt narrative shifts. In fact, if characters who we last saw a year and a half ago appear in the strip, Gasoline Alley will remind you what their names are by having another character say them out loud, in bold type! Gasoline Alley is just thoughtful like that, and as a rapidly aging member of its audience, I appreciate it.

Mary Worth, 10/1/24

Sorry, Estelle, I know your mind is clouded with sorrow right now, but you had both these pets for some time before you met Ed, so he can’t possibly have achieved “daddy” status with them. Technically Wilbur owned Pierre before he handed him off to you because of their complete failure to bond emotionally, so to Pierre Wilbur is daddy! Frankly this just seems to be pointing towards a reunion wiOH NO OH NO OH NO ABORT ABORT ABORT