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Shoutout to –2+2=7’s long reign at the top, but after my vacation respite, it’s finally time to crown a new COTW:

“I just realized that I have no idea what Lt. Fuzz’s job is at Camp Swampy. I presumed that maybe he was Halftrack’s personal assistant, but then I thought his job is literally blocking Halftrack’s view of Buxley at all times (per the restraining order).” –The Rambling Otter

The runners up, as always, are very funny!

“‘Your fiance the veterinarian.’ Cousin Pam is not buying this ONE BIT. Ed is going to have to text some pictures of the disemboweled Mitzi on the table, so that Estelle can save face.” –MKay

“I don’t care for the ‘ha ha’ in Beetle Bailey. It changes the throwaway gag from ‘Zero does not know what infantry means’ to ‘Zero is injecting a bit of levity into the proceedings, ha ha, just a little wordplay from Camp Swampy’s resident wit.’” –Dan

“The Phantom shows Ed how to do emotional unavailability right. ‘Me and my animals are riding off to fake our deaths. If anyone cares about me, tell them tough shit.’” –matt w

“New Mark Trail knows that it is not enough to pander to male readers interested in manly nature adventures! You also need to cater to female interests, such as true crime and how to dispose of a body!” –Ettorre

“Difficult births are primarily caused (except for complications) with humans’ unusually large head sizes. So it’s understandable why Rufus was an easy slide out. Like pouring dog food out of a can.” –Buck Ripsnort

“Rufus could still be a fae or another mythical creature that simply implanted its young into a human host, with embryonic Rufus eating the original fetus for nutrition. Never underestimate the potential horror hiding underneath this strip that has lived longer than nature or culture should allow.” –Philip

“Hi and Lois get sued after Fitch loses an eye trying to get to their garbage. Yes, today I went to Wikipedia to look up the names of the Flagston’s garbage men, a new low for me.” –nescio

“Going outside without shoes or slippers, is this a blatant attempt to get Hi an entry on Wikifeet?” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Yeah, we’ve got chess in the break room. Why do you ask? Wait, aren’t you the kid who innocently repeats his parents’ insults? Does your dad think we’re dumb because we work at a lumber yard, or a Home Depot, or wherever this is? Let’s talk to him about that, shall we?” –Anonymous

“My wife had trigger finger. I bet she’ll be really excited when I tell her that Rex Morgan M.D. is featuring HER problem, only in the comic strip it’s being suffered by a secondary character, who’s this old guy who plays country music and usually spends a lot of time sitting in a diner I think harassing the waitress but he’s spent the last few weeks instead just sitting on a bench talking to random strangers and … you know what? I’ll keep it to myself.” –Briane Pagel

“I can’t fatally overdose on C-Span, you idiot!” –TheDiva

“I like the dense grey fog that seems to be surrounding home plate, as if they’re playing on the highland moors.” –pugfuggly

“I didn’t recognize the beautifully drawn umpire’s uniform, and just assumed Dennis was just haranguing the local mailman with demented conspiracy theories. Mr. Wilson used to be a USPS employee, and I’m sure he’s filled Dennis’s head with all kinds of dark murmurings about how he never got promoted because the Post Office is full of Commies and Freemasons.” –Schroduck

“So there’s this guy, see, who always wears the same clothes with one big button in the middle. No one ever sees him without it. Even his wife! He tells her, he tells people, you can never unfasten this button. And she wonders. She lies awake next to him at night, looking at the button, touching the button, obsessing about the button. One dark night, as he’s asleep in a sandwich coma — what? oh, he likes sandwiches, really big ones, and they put him to sleep, like a snake, look, that’s really not critical to the story and … well, I thought it added color … fine, she undoes the button and his clothes and skin slough off into a heap revealing a welter of undigested food around a black hungry maw that never stops chewing, happy? You ruined it. Fuck off.” –Voshkod

“Crap, crap, crap. I overslept this morning and don’t have time to make a proper joke. Fortunately, so did the writing team at Shoe, it seems.” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

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Shoe, 9/27/24

I guess if all you want to get out of the daily comics is to briefly linger on each little joke and then move on to the next one, you might be satisfied with today’s Shoe, where they spin up “disagree with” as a metaphor for indigestion into a matter of geopolitical importance. But me? The Comics Curmudgeon? The guy who’s blogged about comic strips for decades? I hopefully do not have to explain that I am the kind of person who wants more than that, and after lingering on this joke slightly longer than most would, I have decided I do not care for it. I think it’s the “not only” at the beginning of the first word balloon, which implies that that the second half of this sentence is going to be something new, rather than just an extension of the metaphor. Plus it invites you to contemplate how the peppers got there, suggesting the “ramming [X] down my throat” formulation that is one of the least pleasant phrases in political discourse. So, sorry, Shoe, I’m not on board today. Do better.

Blondie, 9/27/24

Easy for you to say, Dagwood: unlike your wife, who only puts on her formal clothes before a big date night with you, you go through the trouble of putting on your elaborate tuxedo in the morning, before leaving for the office, a place where you wear a tuxedo, for some reason! I guess making your carpool wait for you is preferable to making your spouse wait for you, in terms of keeping the marital peace.

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Dennis the Menace, 9/26/24

Here, in no particular order, is a list of possible menacing reasons why Dennis is wearing street clothes in this exchange when you’d expect him to be in a baseball uniform, some mutually exclusive and some not:

• Dennis has a general policy of refusing to wear a uniform while playing baseball due to the oppositional defiance disorder that his parents and coaches have never been able to overcome.
• Dennis has a general policy of refusing to wear a uniform while playing baseball because he understands that red overalls over a striped shirt are his #brand, which he is very keen to maintain and promote.
• Dennis isn’t even playing baseball today; he’s just wandered onto the field to harass the umpire.
• The creators of Dennis the Menace are not confident in their ability to draw the title character of their comic strip in a way that would be recognizable to the readers if he weren’t wearing his trademark red overalls over a striped shirt.
• The creators of Dennis the Menace do not have access to clip art of the title character of their comic strip in which he is not wearing his trademark red overalls over a striped shirt.

The Phantom, 9/26/24

A fun thing about the Phantom is that he dates from the very earliest days of superhero comics, so his outfit is your basic weird skintight body suit and cowl but, when it comes to a fight, his main “power” is the pair of pistols he keeps handy most of the time. Anyway, today the big purple guy has caught up with one of the out-of-control robots unleashed by fake Elon Musk’s crashed rocket, and he’s just going to straight-up shoot it to death, with bullets. Probably it’s not going to work and he’ll need to do something more clever, but it would be pretty funny if it did, right? “Well, Hero, Devil,” he’ll say to his faithful animal companions, “that problem is solved. Thank God for guns, the best friend a superhero can have!”