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Beetle Bailey, 10/12/23

I don’t know if General Halftrack’s rambling comeback here is supposed to be funny (it isn’t) or if it’s supposed to indicate that he’s flustered and not very smart so the only comeback he can unleash is this unfunny word salad (which also isn’t funny even in a meta way). Either way, not good. I know that a lot of times I take my “Comics Curmudgeon” mission as a chance to riff on some intellectual or social or artistic theme, but sometimes I just gotta point to a strip and say “You didn’t do so hot today, friend.”

Shoe, 10/12/23

Someday I’m going to be senile and in a home somewhere and will have forgotten the names and faces of everyone I’ve ever loved, but certain bits of terrible knowledge will just be burned into my decaying brain forever. “Birds and other animals with cloacae don’t really have sphincters like mammals and just pee and poop freely all day” is one of those facts that will never leave me, and I’m reasonably sure I learned it while researching a post about Shoe. All these bird-people should be wearing adult diapers, is what I’m saying.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/12/23

I’m not going to say that this long, shaggy-dog Mud apology tour/Mirakle Method storyline would be redeemed if it ends with Truck summarily firing Buck as his agent and taking on this criminal as an agent. But, like, I wouldn’t be mad about it, either.

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Mary Worth, 10/11/23

Wow, this current Mary Worth storyline is really upping the moral stakes from “Dogs: Are they good, or should we encourage them to fight to the death” to “The Man: Should he have it stuck to him, or should be he be respected by all?” Since, as former Marine and law enforcement officer, Keith is very much the Man, we can see that this brand new father-daughter relationship has now hit its very first conflict. Sadly, it seems that even their shared love of root beer can’t bridge the gap: Keith is spitting out the remains of his last swig, disgusted that he could possibly enjoy a beverage beloved by a radical like Sonia.

Beetle Bailey, 10/11/23

Honestly, have we ever seen Beetle out of uniform? I can only think of one instance, which was part of a Sarge nightmare sequence, and say what you will about Beetle’s look there, but it wasn’t casual.

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Blondie, 10/10/23

I once saw an interview with John Singleton and Stephanie Allain, the producers of the movie Hustle and Flow, about a scene where the characters kick a woman out of the house they’re living in, and how physical to make that confrontation, and they settled on using as a model Fred Flintstone gently yet firmly dropping Dino on the front stoop in the opening credits of The Flintstones. Fred’s act in turn has a context in the time not so long ago when people’s pets freely roamed outside much of the time and in particular were not expected to stay indoors at night, though dogs at least usually got their own little house in the yard for shelter. This was an arrangement that might still hold in rural areas of the U.S. today but has been unheard of in cities and suburbs long enough that I found it puzzling when I watched decades-old Flintstones reruns in the early ’80s; but legacy newspaper comics are the most ossified form of cultural production known to science, and so Blondie was still sticking with it as late as 2007. Today, finally, in the futuristic year 2023, we have confirmation that Daisy lives inside full-time with the Bumsteads (though frankly we knew even back then she slept indoors some nights). Honestly the most unrealistic thing happening here is that Elmo knows what a “doghouse” is.

Gasoline Alley, 10/10/23

I don’t want to sound like a killjoy but, talking bears aside, the moral of this Gasoline Alley plot seems to be “if you find a child and don’t know where their parents are, and the child seems to like you, you can use trickery and force to stop the evil government from attempting to reunite the child with said parents,” which seems, uh, not great? Obviously it would be worse if anyone read Gasoline Alley and it had any chance of influencing any opinions about anything, but still.

Dennis the Menace, 10/10/23

Setting whatever menace Dennis thinks he’s perpetrating here aside, we need to acknowledge his “dentist” is clearly just Mr. Wilson, who has “disguised” himself by shaving his mustache. As a retired postal carrier, Mr. Wilson lacks any of the skills necessary to be a safe dental practitioner, but I fear that’s exactly the point.

Hi and Lois, 10/10/23

Sure, working as cartoonist for a legacy newspaper comic is probably not that creatively fulfilling and doesn’t pay very well either. But when it comes to turning an annoying experience you had into a “joke” that you can be sure literally hundreds of people will read, it simply can’t be beat.