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Mary Worth, 2/11/21

Oh, say, what’s going on in the Mary Worth domestic violence storyline, which will surely get the same nuanced, realistic treatment that the sexual assault storyline received? Well it turns out that Eve’s abusive ex-husband had a comical vaudeville villain mustache, and also he died, and then she left town with the money she inherited from him and bought a nice condo in Santa Royale. But the importan question: is she moving on emotionally with the help of a licensed professional therapist? Turns out that yes, yes she is. Well, problem solved, time for the next storyline, I guess!

Shoe, 2/11/21

Props to Shoe for long ago figuring out that the format of an open-ended question on a school test is a good opportunity to wedge old jokes into their strip, but I really have question the quality of education that Skyler is receiving. Maybe he knows these one-liners are utterly failing to prepare him for the modern workforce, and that’s why he looks so depressed all the time.

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The Lockhorns, 2/10/21

Leroy has traditionally commuted to work by train, but it looks like he’s managed to make friends the acquaintance of some coworkers and weaseled his way into a carpool. I guess he thought that, unlike his experience on public transit, in a carpool he’d get a response when just threw out some unprompted ruminations about how depressing his marriage/life is? Based on how studiously that guy is looking at his phone, I’m going to have to say he’s wrong on that point.

Hi and Lois, 2/10/21

What really makes this strip for me is that Goldie does in fact look extremely depressed. This isn’t a typical joke about a little kid’s boundless empathy overestimating an animal’s unhappiness; nope, Trixie is like “wow, our goldfish never gets to go anywhere!” and the goldfish’s face absolutely confirms that it’s stuck in a hell-prison and hates every minute of it.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/10/21

I’m not sure what about Jughaid’s statement reflects more misplaced optimism: that he thinks Hootin’ Holler’s economy will improve in the next eight years to the extent that it will be able support a movie theater, that the movie theater business will even still be around in eight years, or that, as someone living in an impoverished community where malnutrition and clan violence are endemic, he’ll survive to adulthood.

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Beetle Bailey, 2/9/21

I guess the point of this strip is that each of these characters is responding to the question of what to get Sarge for his birthday in his own way, according to his own character (in Beetle Bailey, “character” means “whatever dumb on-the-nose collection of tics and running gags they’ve accrued over the years”). So, Plato wants to give him a book, because he’s a nerd; Killer wants to give him a box of candy, because he’s so monomaniacally focused on getting laid that his only context for gift-giving is the cliches of heterosexual courtship; Zero wants to to give him a comic book, because he’s dumb (?); and Rocky wants to give him a music mix, because he’s named “Rocky” due to the fact that when he was introduced into the strip, his one-note character was focused on liking rock ‘n’ roll music, which was as novel then as omnipresent personal computers were when Specialist Chip Gizmo was introduced in the early ’00s, because that’s just how long Beetle Bailey has been around. Anyway, I wanted to point out that all of these people are giving Sarge something they’d like, not something that he would actually want to receive. Can you visualize Sarge reading a book? Of course not. Only Beetle’s proposal is actually thoughtful. Sadly, it will not be appreciated.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/9/21

After kicking off his life as a diagnosed diabetic with one last indulgent fast-food meal, Buck’s blood sugar numbers got real bad, but then he came home and exercised, and they got OK again! Is this … how diabetes works? I don’t know much about it but I do know that Rex Morgan, M.D., is a rigorously fact-checked comic that aims primarily to spread accurate medical information, so I’m just going to assume that this is, in fact, how diabetes works. Good job, Buck! Looks like you’re on your way to a healthy lifesty[finally gets to narration box at bottom of second panel] OH NO

Pluggers, 2/9/21

I mean, duh, of course he’s not going to fold up his underwear. The wrinkle lines are a further turn-on for fans of the sick sex thing that Pluggers, in one of 2021’s biggest surprises, has become.