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Dustin, 11/5/24

The thing about Dustin is that it’s a perfect machine of hateability, in the sense that there isn’t a single recurring character that I have any real warm feelings for. Dustin’s sister Meg in some ways escapes my ire the most, because she has very little in terms of revealed personality and exists only to make rude comments about her brother and parents and occasionally be reprimanded for dressing too slutty. Today, however, we learn that her misanthropic attitude extends beyond her family to the human race at large, and frankly I would love to learn more about Doomer Goth Meg in future installments of this strip.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/5/24

A sobering discovery of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is that, in many places that embraced electoral democracy, it functions less as a way for wise or efficacious policies and ideas to be debated and endorsed by the citizen body, and more as a head-counting exercise: different interest groups within a society, many of them ethnic- or clan-based, use the vote as a means to assert their numbers and power rather than to win in the marketplace of ideas. While this might not be what the Enlightenment philosophers and America’s founding fathers had in mind, you have to admit that the Smifs and the Barlows taunting each other by means of “I Voted” buttons is preferable to their usual means of settling disputes (murdering one another with antique rifles and whatever other makeshift weapons they can lay their hands on).

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Alice, 11/4/24

A thing I think about a lot is that the guy who the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory inspired to shoot up Comet Ping-Pong in the aftermath of the 2016 election had gotten home internet only a few weeks before. Imagine going from zero to 2016-election-campaign-level internet madness instantly! You’ve heard vaguely that the “Web” is the best way to learn about news and current events, finally get hooked up, and the first thing you discover is that there’s a cabal of pedophiles operating out of a pizza place in D.C. Anyway, it’s eight years later and the internet has gotten a lot worse, so, I’m just going to say it: I’m worried about Alice.

Dick Tracy, 11/4/24

I have a stepbrother who used to be a Marine and is recently retired from the Border Patrol, and that’s a great way to hear all the jokes that different kinds of troops and/or cops tell about each other (he once referred to the Highway Patrol as “AAA with a badge,” for instance). This Dick Tracy storyline started with a crazy (?) guy getting arrested by the Neo-Chicago Transit Authority (T.A.) for jumping a turnstyle, showing a fake (?) employee ID from the mysterious “Totten Organization,” and then he got murdered in the bathroom of the T.A. jail, so I’m hoping to see some similar inter-agency snark upcoming. I feel like we’re off to a good start here with the Chief telling Dick, “Oh yeah, some guy got arrested for an extremely minor crime and then died in jail, right under the T.A. cops’ noses … but wait, this time there’s something screwy about that scenario.”

Mary Worth, 11/4/24

Sometimes with visual art, it’s an open question whether you’re supposed to interpret what you’re seeing literally, or just understand that the people and items you can see have been arranged as you see them in order to emphasize their importance and relevance. Like, did Dr. Ed and Estelle really set up an end table for their three pets to sit on and bark/meow approvingly while they toast one another in front of their five friends and Wilbur? Or are they “really” on the floor, but we’ve only got two panels and surely you don’t want us to ditch the establishing shot or draw anybody’s feet?

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Beetle Bailey, 11/3/24

Every once in a while, you do have to wonder how much anyone at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC knows about the actual U.S. military and how it works. Like, do you think that they’re vaguely aware that’s there’s a football team called “Army,” but don’t know that it’s the college team fielded by the U.S. Military Academy and assume instead that its players are just, like, enlisted men chosen at random? Anyway, today our Camp Swampy heroes are playing against a team [squints at helmets] comprised of literal pirates, or maybe representing Death itself.

Family Circus, 11/3/24

Say what you will about today’s Tiktok-addled children, but they would not get distracted from a wholesome family game by some dumb hobo clown on TV and then sit there watching him enraptured for a full minute. Kids simply don’t have that kind of attention span anymore.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/3/24

Noooo, Wanda, be careful, Truck is trying to pull you into his bench sitting based lifestyle, don’t fall for it