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Family Circus, 1/17/25

OK, I know comics are, by their nature, cartoonish, and there isn’t always that much variety between faces so other characteristics are used as cues to ID characters, but when I first saw this panel I immediately thought that the lady behind Dolly has Ma Keane’s face and now I can’t shake it. It’s Ma Keane in a weird wig and a weirder fake chin! It’s like one of those movies where Tilda Swinton plays multiple characters (which also makes me think that Tilda Swinton could plausibly play Ma Keane, which would be terrifying and amazing).

Intelligent Life, 1/17/25

Damn, Dark Haired Intelligent Life Character Whose Name Is Not In The Dialogue Today And I Don’t Remember It And Refuse To Look It Up: your friend Mike sounds like he wants to do drugs with you, which frankly would be the coolest thing that ever happened in this dork-ass comic strip. And you suggest watching Doctor Who instead, like a damn nerd! I love Doctor Who and never do drugs myself and even I’m kind of embarrassed for you.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/17/25

God, I love the way Michelle is waggling her wedding ring at Summer in the first panel. “Oh, are you sad and lonely at home by yourself? Couldn’t be me! Check out the bling! Big spouse haver over here!”

Curtis, 1/17/25

WARNING: GREG WILKINS KNOWS HE IS IN A COMIC STRIP AND IS AWARE OF THE STRUCTURE OF HIS FICTIONAL UNIVERSE, CONTAINMENT BREACH IMMINENT

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Beetle Bailey, 1/16/25

I actually am curious about the chain of thought that determined which secondary Beetle Bailey character got the punchline said at him in this strip. Personally, I would’ve gone with Plato — the camp intellectual would’ve been wryly amused at Beetle’s use of linguistic ambiguity to shirk a few hours of duty. But Killer is staring at him blankly and clearly doesn’t get it at all. “How is this going to help get anybody laid?” he thinks. “We’re not keeping our eyes on the prize here.”

The Phantom, 1/16/25

Just think: a mere 17 years ago, the very notion of women joining the Jungle Patrol was a source of near universal derision. But today, the feminine beauty of the Jungle Patrolwomen is legendary, so much so that criminal perverts like this guy arrange to be brutalized by the Phantom just so he can experience a touch of their healing fingertips. This is a triumph of, uh, feminism? Probably?

Crock, 1/16/25

Not sure why this guy is so intimidated by a rifle-toting yahoo back home. My dude, you are in the Foreign Legion and are posted in the colonies! You have definitely done some war crimes, probably today.

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Marvin, 1/15/25

The thing about writing a blog post a day, every day, forever, is that you can definitely find yourself caught in some ruts, which makes me sympathetic to the ruts that comics creators, who have to write a comic a day, every day, forever, find themselves in, even when one of my ruts is making fun of their ruts. I’ve been making fun of poop and piss jokes in Marvin for 18 years now — a lifetime, really — and the last time I brought it up, a faithful commentator gently pointed out that actually Marvin has moved away from that material of late. And they’re right! I should be giving this strip credit for the rich veins of comic possibilities it’s been mining beyond the excretory. Pretty sure no other strip is working in the “what if a dog and a baby who lived together really disliked each other, just honestly hated each other’s guts and were always going out of their way to antagonize one another” space, and honestly I respect it.

Alice, 1/15/25

Speaking of my long blogging career, I’ve been talking about the comic strip Alice on this blog for 10 months now, which is long enough for me to indignantly assume the role of “keeper of the Alice lore.” And as all real Alice-heads know, the Aliceverse already has an alien species that visits our planet in pill-shaped spacecraft. And now you’re trying to tell me that there’s some whole different kind of aliens with more conventional-looking flying saucers? Sorry, I’m not buying it.