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Shoe, 1/25/25

I was going to go on a riff here about the circumstances under which a lawyer might have to quickly shift from shoes-off relaxation to professional client acquisition mode, but you know what, I’m going to keep my eyes on the prize here: he’s a bird! He can fly! He should be flying after that ambulance, that’s by far the most efficient way to chase it! C’mon!

Pluggers, 1/25/25

I was going to go on a riff here about how I still think of seat warmers as kind of a luxury feature and it’s interesting to see famously frugal and non-elite pluggers casually using one in place of a heating pad you can get for $15 at CVS, but you know what, I’m going to keep my eyes on the prize here: that’s clearly how you would draw the panel if your original joke was about pluggers farting in their cars and then your editor was like “No, sorry, too gross,” but you were on deadline and you had to figure out how to use the same art for something else.

Bizarro, 1/25/25

Aw, I think it’s cute how sad the ghost on the right looks! I mean, I would be too if I died and found out I still had to “make plans” and “set goals.” Not doing any of that shit would be the #1 best thing about being dead!

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Greetings, fellow humans. It is Friday, which means it’s the day I share with you my favorite comment of the week from this weblog:

“You are among at least two friends! I mean, the waitress was pretty friendly, right? And also … let’s see … the building’s HVAC unit! That’s a friend you can always count on!” –Nekrotzar

Many other comments were also deserving of recognition. Here is the list:

“I don’t want to appear jealous … jealous of Dirk for finding Dawn’s nerd side! Dawn never wanted to talk about Star Wars with me, but to Dirk she’s ‘nerdgirl’?! Wait until my incel subreddits hear about how the alpha chads cucked me this time!” –Schroduck

“Dirk’s a boisterous, selfish lout. Jared is an emotionally manipulative manchild who can’t let go of an ex. When do they rub magic rings together and form ‘Captain Wilbur?’” –Where’s Rocky?

“How ’bout a spin-off cartoon about The Bribegiver, that fellow in the blue tunic who has brought a wheelbarrow full of gold across this criminal wasteland all by himself, unprotected (catch phrase: ‘I’ll catch up with you later, boys!’) and now stands, smug and self-satisfied, twiddling his thumbs on his well-fed belly?” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Comics that I thought would reach the ‘Clean Wehrmacht’ myth before Dick Tracy: Frazz (‘Actually, ignorant children, the German Army…’), 9 Chickweed Lane (introducing new ‘sexy Aryan’ character), Crock (Crock gets orders from Admiral Darlan to work with the Germans), Mary Worth (Dawn falls for an elderly German man), Dennis the Menace (Mister Wilson defends his time in the Waffen SS), Garfield (‘I hate Monday and Nazis, but not everyone who fought was…’)” –Voshkod

“You know who else thinks it’s weird that the only guest at Mr. Wilson’s birthday party is their 5-year-old neighbor? Dennis’ parents. But not enough to come over themselves, and join in this extremely sad celebration. Dennis is definitely fine, probably!” –BigTed

“Dirk isn’t afraid to verbally abuse his girlfriend of like 10 days, but he’s apparently afraid of leg day.” –LTJpezcore1

“For you depraved furries who might well make up close to half of Pluggers’ fanbase, here’s the hot, sexy, bare-shouldered middle-aged chicken-woman action you’ve always wanted.” –Morgan Wick

“Today, what I learned is that Loweezy even wears her ubiquitous headscarf to bed, donning a cute frilly sleeping hat on top of it. Also, possibly, that the artists of Barney Google & Snuffy Smith aren’t actually sure what Loweezy’s head is supposed to look like underneath said scarf.” –Kevyn on Video

“It’s good to know that even though she’s a backwoods hillbilly, Loweezy knows the difference between ‘yo’re’ and ‘yore.’” –Weaselboy

“I think the thing I’m loving is that ‘He’s just boring!’ is suddenly considered a bad thing in the Rexverse, instead of an aspiration goal, with the icing on the cake being that the thing this dude is babbling on about, restoring vintage cars, is the obsession of her daughter’s boyfriend. Ha, in your face, Niki! Even the narrative thinks you’re boring as shit!” –2+2=7

“See, Summer? If you’d taken up a hobby, YOU could be the conversation hog on this date!” –MKay

“You’d think that a comics based entirely on NASCAR would have exhausted the jokes years ago, but then you read Gearhead Gertie and it turns out you’re right.” –Ettorre

“I think it’s kind of sad that the babies (and animals?) in this strip seem to have telepathic powers, but waste it communicating bullshit like this.” –pugfuggly

“BLONDIE: Ooh, I’ll have to remember that! That’s great, did you come up with it?
SALESWOMAN (working on commission): Yep.” –Dan

“But if countless tales have taught me nothing else, now is the time for Tina to humanize this Greg, Enkidu-style, that he may enjoy wine, and bread, and human pleasures. Until Greg runs amok across NYC, climbs the Empire State Building, and is gunned down by biplanes.” –A Grave Mind

“Blondie sours on the deal when the clerk uses a comma splice.” –Hibbleton

“So Blondie, a small business owner who earns her own money, is concerned about her husband learning how much she spent on a nice dress. Dagwood, an office drone who alone consumes as much food in a single day as an average large family and golfs, a notoriously expensive hobby. Helen Reddy is spinning in her grave.” –Tabby Lavalamp

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Tina’s Groove, 1/24/25

A thing about being a monarch is that nobody can stop you from doing all sorts of awful sicko stuff, and usually this takes the form of wars or religious persecution or what have you, but sometimes it just means they get to play out their sadistic whims. A particularly sadistic one is “raising a baby that nobody ever speaks to in the hopes that it will talk and we’ll learn what God’s original language is,” and there really must be something to this because supposedly four different rulers — Pharaoh Psamtik I, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, King James IV of Scotland, and the Mughal Emperor Akbar — supposedly tried it. There’s some doubt that any of these experiments really took place, although the recorded end of Frederick’s — “But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments” — seems grimly plausible.

Anyway, it doesn’t sound like Greg’s upbringing was that extreme, but still, it does seem like he’s the subject of some kind of experiment? Maybe to see if, never having met another soul outside his family in his whole sad sack life, he’d fall in love with the anxious, depressive protagonist of Tina’s Groove? She had a boyfriend a a couple weeks ago, but she’s on the prowl for hot (?) friends’ cousins now, apparently!

Blondie, 1/24/25

Speaking of people isolated from outside stimulus, I will note that Blondie appears to be hearing “I am woman, hear me roar,” a line from a Helen Reddy song released in 1971, for the first time, and I would actually like to see an analysis of what parts of her brain are “modern suburban wife and caterer” and what parts are “flapper girl from the 1930s.” I think that’d be a real interesting experiment, honestly! Not sure if we could do it with an MRI machine or what, I leave the implementation details to the eggheads.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/24/25

I was going to suggest that Hootin’ Holler was so isolated from mainstream society that its inhabitants are ignorant of even basic cryptid information, which explains why Jughaid seems to confuse “snowman” in the sense of the folk art he’s creating in his yard with the mysterious shaggy man-like beast of the Himalayas. But clearly Snuffy is well steeped in the lore, so I guess we just have to admit that Jughaid is kind of dumb.