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Daddy Daze, 12/17/21

Normally, I’m a big proponent of the “show, don’t tell” maxim in a visual medium like the comics, but you know what? I have zero interest in seeing twelve misshapen lumps of crumpled up newspaper stuffed inside baby clothes arranged in a circle in the middle of the floor while the Daddy Daze daddy crawls around them, interpreting his child’s incoherent babbling as Reginald Rose’s Emmy-winning dialogue. I don’t want to see that at all! I don’t even want to hear about it!

Beetle Bailey, 12/17/21

I was going to go on a riff here about how apparently we’re getting some psychological backstory on why Rocky is the way he is and ask who is that for, exactly, but then the question occurred to me: who is any of Beetle Bailey for, when you think about it? I mean I guess there are still people who jerk off to Miss Buxley, but I assume that’s a demographic that’s dying off pretty rapidly at this point. So sure, whatever, let’s get into the poverty-haunted home life that led to Rocky’s war crimes trial, might as well.

Crankshaft, 12/17/21

Ha ha, it’s funny because Crankshaft was playing Santa at Lillian’s store, but then he got drunk and passed out!

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Gil Thorp, 12/16/21

Oh, boy, the basketball season storyline of Gil Thorp is already more promising than this fall’s snoozefest because it looks like it’s going to do one of my favorite Gil Thorp things: grapple with a Very Serious Social Issue! Remember back in 2009, when we learned that “‘sexting’ is a serious problem” that’s “been in Time and Newsweek“? Remember how the strip’s version of sexting was “a girl wearing a an extremely non-revealing bikini made out of soda cartons?” Anyway, I’m assuming that sportsduke dot com is the Thorpiverse analog to the sports betting site draftkings dot com, which has gone mainstream now that the Supreme Court said sports betting is A-OK a few years back, and Pranit is about to come down with a Serious Gambling Problem. Or maybe he’s going to make a bunch of money and then start acting as a bookie for his little friends! Maybe Milford athletes are going to bet on games they’re playing in! I demand maximum drama, darn it!!

Dennis the Menace, 12/16/21

I’m going to give Dennis the benefit of the doubt here: the way he’s cupping his hand next to his mouth is a little too theatrical for this to be an entirely sincere expression of anxiety, which is good because it’s frankly the sort of thing we’d expect from Jeffy Keane. No, I’m guessing that Dennis is trying to start some kind of mass panic among the children, either out of a simple desire to stir up shit or because he has devious schemes in play that will be furthered by a scene of screaming chaos. At any rate, I tentatively deem this to be adequately menacing.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/16/21

Wow, look at Tater and Jughaid, eating their cookies off plates like little liberal fancy boys! Snuffy is modeling the only way a real man eats: just letting your jaw hang slack and your tongue loll out grotesquely so you can shove the whole cookie in at once.

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Dick Tracy, 12/15/21

Let’s face it folks: between COVID-19, a general prejudice against nerds, and a widespread unwillingness on the public’s part to engage with anything that isn’t part of a larger, branded “cinematic universe,” museums and libraries and other so-called “brainiac institutions” are in trouble! That’s why we’re trying to “get the word out” in the funny pages about how these places are actually pretty cool, when you think about it. We already had a long story in Rex Morgan about how doing stuff at a museum can lead to you acquiring a mob enforcer as a chauffeur; now we’re learning that if you’ve been paid with murdering a particularly formidable adversary, maybe there’ll be an exhibit about him at your local library that will let you know about all his vulnerabilities and weak spots.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/15/21

Speaking of Sarah’s adventures in unearned and unwanted (?) fame and fortune, let’s not forget that she’s not the only pseudonymous author on the Kitty Cop series: there’s also “Kyle Vidpa,” aka Jake Rowling, whose writers’ block got Sarah involved in all this in the first place, and who is presumably about to blow his own cover to distract from Sarah. Look at his wife in the background of panel two! That is the face of a lady who’s about to go through a lot annoyance for a kid who she quite frankly doesn’t even know, and she’s not thrilled about it!