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Hey folks! Have you ever heard about a little something called karma???? It goes like this: I make an innocent little joke in which I call for the death of Dustin, the beloved title character of the comic strip Dustin, and then I am immediately myself afflicted with a case of COVID-19. Symptoms quite mild but probably not best for me to spend 90 minutes tonight yelling jokes at a crowd of people in a poorly ventilated theater, so I am cancelling tonight’s Internet Read Aloud!!! Sorry all and hopefully I can get this gang back together in 2023.

Not even a serious respiratory virus can stop the comment of the week, however, which was carefully selected in my sealed bunker:

“Billy doesn’t seem to me like the kind of kid who’d have an expensive, lab-quality microscope, but if he got one, he’s definitely the kind of kid who’d leave it on the floor.” –Steph

The runners up? Also quite funny!

“This one got a real smile out of me. Not because of the ‘joke,’ but because I enjoy seeing Hi and Lois being shitty to their dumb kids. Look at those little jerkwads all sad and stuff. This is the true meaning of Halloween!” –pugfuggly

“Wait, can the Daddy Daze Mommy ‘hear’ the ‘real’ meaning of Angus’s ‘ba ba ba’s too? Either he’s actually communicating with them or their shared insanity makes their breakup either that much more inexplicable, or that much more inevitable.” –Morgan Wick

“I’d say hitting on your waitress is inappropriate, but maybe it’s ironic flirting to go with her kitschy, ironic beehive hairdo? Is that what the kids are into these days?” –made of wince

“There’s still hope for a twist ending, as that entire spur of rock breaks off.” –Ken

“Now let’s talk about the murder of Kathy Kangaroo and Slick Smitty wearing her skin.” –Liam

“Dying to find out if the robot dog is looking at, like, a midwestern mayonnaise and potato chip salad and affectionately chuckling, ‘Well ain’t that America folks?’ or if his character is being forcibly hauled away from a government building and angrily shouting, ‘OH I’M SORRY IS THIS NOT AMERICA’ at the security guards.” –Dan

“Maybe Slick Smitty was a furry in the Before Times, and his shit-eating grin is because all those who made fun of him for wanting to live in an animal world are now dead.” –Philip

“Just look at Summer vigorously taking notes. ‘Pulitzer, here I come!’” –Lord Flatulance

“Sorry, I phrased that incorrectly. What I meant to say is, ‘Standing on cliff edges? No way I’m done with that!’ Check this out, I’m gonna pee over the edge and make my own waterfa– Oops! Uff!” –jroggs

“Montoni’s pizza is made with love and our secret special ingredient (the secret ingredient is amniotic fluid).” –Schroduck

“‘You’re weird but I’m disgusting.’ That showed her. Possibly.” –Anonymous (but not that one)

“‘Compulsive’ implies a lack of free will in the matter and thus a lack of personal responsibility. Blondie chose the life of uncovering secrets and spreading shame and revels in it!” –Ettorre

“Under the old writer, Gil and Mimi spent their ‘alone time’ drinking an endless wash of fresh lemonade. Perhaps it was the abundance of vitamin C that made for such a happy home.” –Ukulele Ike

“Yes, Dennis. It’s those accursed longshoremen in Los Angeles lollygaging while your precious cookies grow stale in maritime shipping containers.” –Dennis Jimenez

“Uncle Cosmo is even more disappointed. He was counting on this flick to get him out of having ‘the talk’ with Skyler.” –Peanut Gallery

“I’m like a Forever Stamp. Dead man on one side, sticky on the other!” –Voshkod

“Never let it be said that the Perfesser is not taking care of his nephew. Here, he’s teaching him the key adult skill of how to slump in an armchair and stare, glassy-eyed, at anything that’s on TV.” –Lawyerbob

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Dennis the Menace, 11/4/22

I actually think it’s more or less fine to do a syndicated newspaper strip that takes place in some kind of permanent 1950s boomer childhood fantasy world, especially for legacy strips that were born in that era anyway. I do feel like if you’re going to have a 1950s housewife tending to a rascally little tyke in overalls who’s allowed to roam the suburban neighborhood freely with a slingshot, the price you pay is that you can’t have said tyke mouth off about “the supply chain” or whatever. It’s too stale to be actually topical but topical enough that Dennis definitely shouldn’t be talking about it, which puts it in an uncanny valley spot that’s ironically pretty menacing, just not the kind of menacing I like.

The Lockhorns, 11/4/22

Meanwhile, because I contain multitudes, I love it when The Lockhorns get vaguely contemporary. Leroy losing all his money in a crypto scam? Yes, yes I say, give me more of this. The Lockhorns are Millennials after all, so it adds up.

Dustin, 11/4/22

Speaking of topical matters, I did a piece in 2020 about the initial wave of the COVID pandemic and the comics, but didn’t broach the subject that maybe I should’ve: what if a comic character actually died of COVID? I think possibly the funniest possible way for Dustin to dramatically stop publishing would’ve been to have its unloved title character die of wild-type COVID in April 2020, unmourned by his family or his temp agency. Sadly, in late 2022, this is probably just a cold, or at worst an Omicron infection that he’s vaccinated against and will get over, but fingers crossed that he’s maybe got that mutant flu/RSV hybrid that’s going around and we’ll be freed from this strip’s nonsense.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/4/22

Very sad that Summer has chosen a book topic that will require her to interview all her dad’s insufferable old friends, but I suppose the big reveal that the town’s mailman was violating federal law and everyone’s privacy for decades will at least result in a flurry of local sales interest.

Shoe, 11/4/22

I love it when the TV announces that regular programming has been pre-empted for some undisclosed reason and also refuses to tell me what it’s been replaced by, a normal occurrence that happens in real life all the time. Anyway, do you think today’s strip falls into the distressingly frequent Shoe category of “It’s fucked up that they have birds doing this joke”? Discuss.

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Gil Thorp, 11/3/22

The new Gil Thorp writer has definitely upped the strip’s confusion game, which used to be centered on two plots you couldn’t keep track and now involves … three? five? plots, can’t even keep track of how many plots, and one of those plots that we hadn’t heard from in a bit is “Gil is about to become extremely divorced.” I like the way that he beats Mimi to the punch divorce-wise while still putting the onus on her as the divorce-wanter. If he put half as much mindgame effort into his coaching, Milford football might be actually doing well this year! [NOTE: IS MILFORD DOING WELL THIS YEAR? HAVE INTERN LOOK INTO THIS] [NOTE: DO I HAVE AN INTERN? LOOK INTO THIS]

Blondie, 11/3/22

Oh, thank God, I thought shocking rumor was that Greg was Laura Palmer’s killer in Twin Peaks. I haven’t finished the show yet, so no spoilers, please.