The Comics Curmudgeon

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144

Wednesday is for disappointments

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Beetle Bailey, 8/14/19

The thing I like so much about today’s Beetle Bailey is how furious Major Greenbrass looks as General Halftrack delivers the punchline. I have to assume that he saw Halftrack set up the sign on his desk and asked about it, only to have the general say he’d explain once they got on the course. “This?” the major’s face says. “I waited that entire car ride over for this?”

Marvin, 8/14/19

Man, say what you will about all the excrement and urine content Marvin puts us through, but at least we can be thankful that we weren’t subjected to Marvin’s parents talking about sex in what I’m quite sure was an extremely unpleasant manner.

Pluggers, 8/14/19

“Pluggers used to love getting smashed, but now they gotta let a doctor put a camera up their butthole to make sure they’re not dying” sure is a mood for the middle of the week, am I right, folks? Let’s all just sit quietly here for a moment, plugger and non-plugger alike, and think about what the future, or maybe even the present, has in store for us.

169

“Participation crowns” are even worse than participation trophies

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Six Chix, 8/13/19

For some reason I’ve always had it in my head that birds and other animals with cloacae can’t actually control their bowel movements, and that poop or pee or what have you just kind of slides out whenever. A little research, though, taught me that birds can in fct be potty trained, although small ones like budgies have to go every few minutes and they can really hurt themselves if they hold it for too long! I’m telling you this because want all of you to appreciate the disgusting research I do so I don’t convey inaccurate information when I make my dumb poop jokes about a comic strip nobody likes. Anyway, I guess the point is that that bird probably could’ve avoided pooping on that kid if he had wanted to, but, like his friend says, it’s cool. Kids love it when animals shit on them, at parties!

Funky Winkerbean, 8/13/19

I would be going on at great length about how weird it is that this strip concludes with Mindy shooting bedroom eyes at Mopey Pete implying “Sexual delights await you if you, a noted non-jock, are able to score a victory at a carnival game of the sort that’s notoriously rigged, just like my grandfather, a well-known-asshole, was able to do,” except I’m thoroughly distracted by the fact that that’s clearly not her hand holding the baseball. It’s not, right? It’s too big and it’s at the wrong angle. “Easy, Pete, Easy,” poor Mopey Pete is thinking to himself. “Wait till she’s distracted, and then run.”

The Lockhorns, 8/13/19

Ahh, Loretta has finally made a friend, or at least a social acquaintance, and so Leroy knows what to do as soon she arrives, before she’s even had a chance to set down her purse: performatively pour himself a very large glass of brown liquor, knowing that Loretta will inevitably make some wisecrack, with whole scene ensuring this lady will never come back. The Lockhorns really delivered on its core schtick today, and I for one appreciate it.

188

Is this Masters Tournament stolen valor

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Gil Thorp, 8/12/19

So underlying the whole “Hadley is using her big-city lawyer skills to browbeat the school board into letting an ineligible student attend Milford” plot is the “Hadley’s dad, who is also a lawyer, I guess, isn’t really that hot on her relationship with Jaquan for reasons nobody can explain.” I guess Hadley’s just straight-up annihilating the hapless small-town rubes of the Milford school board with facts and logic as way to show her dad that she isn’t “losing her edge”? Anyway, say what you will about Milford’s white-collar local elites, but they are not afraid to wear bold green suits in professional circumstances, which is more than the men in more supposedly culturally liberal big cities can say!

Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, 8/12/19

Yes, it sure is crazy that Mindy would want to come to the county fair, since county fairs are … one of America’s most treasured and popular local attractions? I guess if any effort had been put into coming up with a personality for Funky Winkerbean-era Mindy beyond “fond Crankshaft rememberer and sex reward for Mopey Pete,” we the audience might be surprised too! But she really does have an emotional connection to the fair, it seems: it was the place where she heard grandfather say “A funnel cake is like a donut on steroids!” which was the only time in her entire life that he successfully deployed a common turn of phrase without botching it so badly that it was difficult to believe that he was a native English speaker.

Mary Worth, 8/12/19

What’s Dawn going to do with the few short weeks she has left with Hugo? Sit on the lawn and stare at his ass and calves, apparently! This is honestly the most emotionally healthy choice we’ve ever seen her make.