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Blondie, 2/4/25

Today is in fact “Thank A Mail Carrier Day,” or at least it is according to National Day Calendar Dot Com, and I’m sure that’s good enough for the fake-holiday-obsessed Blondie creative team so it’s good enough for me. Now, while I always think it’s polite to thank someone who provides you with a service, even if they are just doing their job, this does seem like a kind of silly holiday, but you will note that the National Day Calendar Dot Com link provided above describes the event as National Thank A Mail Carrier Day, not Your Mail Carrier Day, which probably reflects the fact that most of us do not interact with our mail carrier on a regular basis, and many routes don’t have the same carrier every day, or may have different carriers delivering letters and packages at different times. Certainly most of us don’t have a consistent mail carrier who somehow manages to get there during a time when a 9 to 5 office worker would be home, and who hands us our mail personally and hangs around to shoot the shit a little bit instead of just putting the letters in the easily accessible mailbox and being on their way. Dagwood should be thanking him!

Dustin, 2/4/25

Dustin (the comic strip) is about the eternal struggle between dipshit son and asshole dad, and I reserve the bulk of my ire for the asshole dad, not because I deny Dustin’s dipshittery, but because the dad is usually depicted as the “correct” agonist in their conflict, when the true enlightened assessment is that they’re both wrong. Still, I’ve often found it unrealistic how quickly Dustin gets shot down in these anachronistic scenarios — like, he’s not hideous or anything and surely it takes a little while for his subpar personality to become obvious? But if he’s really leading with stuff like “I got my hair cut today,” then, yeah, I get it.

Dennis the Menace, 2/4/25

Oh no! Dennis has worked out for himself the idea of inelastic demand … truly one of the more menacing of economic laws!

Beetle Bailey, 2/4/25

I love how dead eyed everyone other than the visiting officer is in panel two. It’s like, yeah, there’s some wacky stuff going on here, but they’ve been dealing with it for like 70 years of strip time now and they’re pretty much over it. They’re not just “used to it”; frankly, they’re exhausted.

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Crock, 2/3/25

Look, man: if you’re going to do a comic about a restaurant where they serve flies instead of fries, I think you can get away with just having the customer indignantly pointing at his plate, which is swarming with flies, and saying “I thought I get fries with this.” That could be it! That could be the whole comic. If you’re still not sure that people are getting it, I guess you could have a waiter saying “Oh, that’s a misprint on the menu.” A little on the nose, but sure. What you don’t need is an entire second panel where you spell out the joke in very literal detail. And look, probably the smart cynics will say, “Oh, you’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of Crock readers,” but as a daily Crock reader myself, I am telling you, we are capable of getting jokes! You don’t need to be so condescending. Reading Crock every day is punishment enough, the least you could do is treat us with common decency.

Blondie, 2/3/25

You know Blondie spent several minutes outside the door, gathering herself and preparing herself emotionally to see Dagwood sitting in a bathtub full of hearty soup, slurping it up with a big ladle or maybe just his hands. Honestly what she’s seeing in panel three is a best-case scenario, Dagwood-wise.

Six Chix, 2/3/25

Here’s some snowpeople engaging in straight-up cannibalism! Pretty messed up, in my opinion.

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The Phantom, 2/2/25

A fun thing about The Phantom (the comic strip) is that it’s one of the oldest superhero franchises, and the Phantom (the character) hasn’t really changed much since the strip launched during FDR’s first term, so he recognizably fits into the “superhero” slot in our collective understanding of the word but one of his primary “superpowers” is “shoots guns”. The current Sunday storyline is sort of a Phantom: Origins flashback, showing what the current Phantom’s Phantom ancestor was up to during the Moroccan invasion of the Songhai Empire in the 1590s. Turns out what he was up to was using his “shoots guns” superpower, even then! Hey kids, you want to see a guy get shot in the chest, right here in the newspaper? It’s OK, it’s, uh, old-timey.

Curtis, 2/2/25

Don’t panic, Curtis! All you have to do is create a Wikipedia page for “Toby Wilkins,” complete with plausible-looking citations, before Mrs. Nelson gets home tonight! Admittedly that doesn’t really sound like something that’d be in your skill set, now that I think about it. Seems to be more like a Barry thing to be honest. Should’ve been nicer to your brother, Curtis! I personally would not quickly whip up a bogus Wikipedia page to help a guy who calls me “troll” on the regular.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/2/25

Your nephew’s band? Is it a roots country band??? We haven’t seen any roots country action in this strip since November, I’m starting to panic