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Beetle Bailey, 1/16/25

I actually am curious about the chain of thought that determined which secondary Beetle Bailey character got the punchline said at him in this strip. Personally, I would’ve gone with Plato — the camp intellectual would’ve been wryly amused at Beetle’s use of linguistic ambiguity to shirk a few hours of duty. But Killer is staring at him blankly and clearly doesn’t get it at all. “How is this going to help get anybody laid?” he thinks. “We’re not keeping our eyes on the prize here.”

The Phantom, 1/16/25

Just think: a mere 17 years ago, the very notion of women joining the Jungle Patrol was a source of near universal derision. But today, the feminine beauty of the Jungle Patrolwomen is legendary, so much so that criminal perverts like this guy arrange to be brutalized by the Phantom just so he can experience a touch of their healing fingertips. This is a triumph of, uh, feminism? Probably?

Crock, 1/16/25

Not sure why this guy is so intimidated by a rifle-toting yahoo back home. My dude, you are in the Foreign Legion and are posted in the colonies! You have definitely done some war crimes, probably today.

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Marvin, 1/15/25

The thing about writing a blog post a day, every day, forever, is that you can definitely find yourself caught in some ruts, which makes me sympathetic to the ruts that comics creators, who have to write a comic a day, every day, forever, find themselves in, even when one of my ruts is making fun of their ruts. I’ve been making fun of poop and piss jokes in Marvin for 18 years now — a lifetime, really — and the last time I brought it up, a faithful commentator gently pointed out that actually Marvin has moved away from that material of late. And they’re right! I should be giving this strip credit for the rich veins of comic possibilities it’s been mining beyond the excretory. Pretty sure no other strip is working in the “what if a dog and a baby who lived together really disliked each other, just honestly hated each other’s guts and were always going out of their way to antagonize one another” space, and honestly I respect it.

Alice, 1/15/25

Speaking of my long blogging career, I’ve been talking about the comic strip Alice on this blog for 10 months now, which is long enough for me to indignantly assume the role of “keeper of the Alice lore.” And as all real Alice-heads know, the Aliceverse already has an alien species that visits our planet in pill-shaped spacecraft. And now you’re trying to tell me that there’s some whole different kind of aliens with more conventional-looking flying saucers? Sorry, I’m not buying it.

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Dennis the Menace, 1/14/25

Now, look, today I’m not really interested in litigating whether this is wildly non-menacing (“Aww, I need to show all the parts of my body that they’re loved, just like my parents show me they love me”) or quite menacing, actually (“If I train my body to accept arbitrary stimulus as the equivalent to human affection, eventually I will have no need for emotional contact with others”). No, I want to focus on Joey’s jaunty body language as he slurps refreshing water through his straw and watches Dennis put on socks. “Wow, so they go between your skin and your shoes, huh? I could see that having a number of positive impacts on the overall foot experience.” I’ve had my issues in the past with strip colorists so I gotta give props to whoever correctly figured out what was going on here and made sure Joey’s ankles were flesh-colored, as this is clearly the first he’s hearing about socks.

Mary Worth, 1/14/25

Mary Worth has delivered any number of outrageous and delightful word-sequences over the years, and though it’s not as flashy as some, I immediately believe that “My parents were successful pharmacists” is up there on this list. Who could’ve imagined that this town’s two top pharmacists, respected by their peers and earning a fine salary, possibly working as a team or maybe each with their own pharmacy to better provide prescription drugs and related goods and services across the region, would get divorced? And why would they do it? Probably because their son’s a huge asshole, is my guess.

Zits, 1/14/25

I haven’t always been on board with the realism of the depiction of teen behavior in this strip, but teens are fairly notoriously terrible kissers, so I’m going to have to hand it Zits for this one.

Six Chix, 1/14/25

What better way to establish how chaotic 2025 will be than choosing to “start the year” a full two weeks into January? Six Chix is doing it exactly right, something I don’t say lightly.