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Hi and Lois, 3/13/23

You know, I’ve often wondered how lovable disheveled loser Thirsty manages to hold down his job at Foofram Industries, but today we learn that by sheer force of not giving a shit he’s not only gainfully employed but has an office with a door and little desk sign that cheerfully proclaims his drinking problem to anyone who wanders in. Mr. Foofram is completely powerless against Thirsty’s utter lack of shame, and frankly a lot of us could take some pointers from him.

Dennis the Menace, 3/13/23

You know, “menacing” is communal process: it requires one party to behave in a potentially menacing fashion and another party to perceive those actions as menacing. So Dennis can trot this stuff out all he wants but if everyone is just going to titter indulgently, it’s not menacing. He’s clearly hoping for a theological escalation that he simply isn’t going to get at this drippy liberal Episcopalian parish his parents drag him to every week.

Gil Thorp, 3/13/23

Every team needs two kinds of assistant coaches: one who yells specific things you need to do, and another one that just yells general compliments. And thanks to their big fundraiser, the Mudlarks can now afford both, who hold down coaching duties on the sideline while Gil goes and takes a 25-minute “smoke break”.

Slylock Fox, 3/13/23

I love that, instead of drawing anything relevant to the logic puzzle he’s giving his class, Sly has just drawn an elaborately lifelike portrait of Count Weirdly on the whiteboard. “Blah blah fingerprints blah blah LOOK AT THIS FACE,” he says. “THIS FACE IS ALWAYS GUITLY. ONCE YOU SEE THE FACE JUST WORK YOUR WAY BACKWARDS TO SOMETHING VAGUELY PLAUSIBLE THEN LOCK HIM UP.”

Mary Worth, 3/13/23

“Your furry friends … [Mary pauses, then has a panicked thought that Wilbur and Dawn might have fursonas she doesn’t know about] … Pierre and Libby?”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/12/23

Barney Google more or less vanished from his namesake strip in the 1930s as it pivoted to cruel jokes about hillbillies full time, but he started making regular appearances again in the early 2010s. I’ve always been a bit curious about why that decision was made — was it just to mix things up in a strip that had gone stale? Was it to ensure that the valuable Barney and Spark Plug IP didn’t fall into the public domain? But today we learn the awful truth: Barney has returned to Hootin’ Holler because this impoverished, isolated community is at risk of catastrophe due to its limited gene pool, and the women of the town are eager for Barney’s flatlander seed.

Blondie, 3/12/23

This is, frankly, a pretty weak showing in the cluttered genre of Blondie strips that latch onto whatever current event has popped up on the calendar; I’m particularly unimpressed that they didn’t even try to fit into actual Oscar categories, instead making up a bunch of vaguely Oscar-esque ones. Still, my biggest concern arises from the very first panel, in which we learn that Dagwood doesn’t know the difference between Facebook and LinkedIn.

Six Chix, 3/12/23

Ha ha, remember Pizza Rat, the beloved internet sensation from 2015? Well, rats typically live about two years, and even the best treated pet rats five or six, so Pizza Rat is definitely dead now. Don’t let Six Chix fool you into believing that he’s lived a long and happy life in the New York Subway somewhere, he’s 100% dead. RIP Pizza Rat, c. 2014-c. 2016, you will be missed.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/11/23

Hank Jr. and his new bride live with comic book artist “Horrible” Hank Sr., and the most likely interpretation of today’s strip that one of the thing that makes Hank Sr. “Horrible” is that he forces his son and daughter-in-law to watch whatever it is that he wants to watch, even though they’re late middle age adults themselves and there are presumably other TVs or screen-based entertainment devices in the house. But the way he’s phrased it, speculating about the movie “dad has in the player,” kind of implies that they’re going to get home long after Hank Sr. has gone to bed, and watching the movie he’s left for them is their only option because the DVD player has some kind of elaborate lock on it, or maybe because these two simply haven’t figured out which of the buttons is “eject”.

Mary Worth, 3/11/23

“It used to be fun coming into your workplace and not doing work! But now that I have to do work … it’s not fun at all. More of a job, really. I don’t care for it.”