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Dustin, 1/12/21

You know, I’ve griped about Dustin slamming on millennials (as represented by the strip’s title character), but I haven’t put that much effort into it because, enh, millennials, probably they have it coming. But when you decide to come after librarians? When you say that librarians don’t want people eating and drinking in the library (which literally ruins books that cost money to replace that they’d have to pay out of their shrinking budget) and they don’t want people reshelving books (which patrons aren’t trained to do and if they screw it up it makes books difficult or impossible to find) and they don’t want people talking on their cell phones in the library (this is literally annoying to everybody, who could possibly object to idiots talking loudly on their cell phones in the library being asked to leave) because they’re frumpy martinets who love rules? That’s when I declare that you’re garbage person and I swear a sacred oath to destroy you. Be warned!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/12/21

So it looks like Barney Google and Snuffy Smith has decided on what the defining feature of its hot new character, Li’l Sparky, is going to be: it’s going to be puns based on noises horses make. As we can tell today, a key aspect of this bit is that Li’l Sparky is going to really insist that everyone acknowledge that he’s doing it, until all the other horses (and, I assume, eventually the non-horse characters) come to dislike him. Can’t wait!

Mary Worth, 1/12/21

“Greta, our friend Eve started weeping openly in public but doesn’t want to talk about it. Is there some way I can make this about me?

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Beetle Bailey, 1/11/21

I refuse to believe that Beetle and Sarge are watching PBS or that Camp Swampy shells out for premium cable, so I’m left to assume that nobody at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC knows that you can pause streaming video.

Blondie, 1/11/21

“Did I think you looked goofy? Well, the two of us are, what, 40? 45? Not much older than that, surely, which means that when I saw you wearing bell-bottomed jeans it was the mid ’90s at the absolute earliest. So yes, I absolutely thought you looked goofy. Or wait, are you referring to JNCOs? Because those were exceptionally goofy.”

Pluggers, 1/11/21

Speaking of the shift of cultural signifiers over time, I feel like either Pluggers or I have absolutely lost the thread. Wearing shorts when there’s snow on the ground, usually on a day where it’s unseasonably pleasant but still “cold” by any objective standard, is something I associate strongly with my college days and therefore Gen X generally, which means that [checks Wikipedia for generally accepted dates for beginning of Generation X, subtracts from 2020] oh my GOD no, no, please, absolutely not

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Family Circus, 1/10/21

Ha ha, it’s funny because kids instinctively know that adults long ago lost their capacity for make believe and are trapped in the dull, grey prison of everyday life!

Crankshaft, 1/10/21

Ha ha, it’s funny because Crankshaft desperately needs to hold onto some small specific joy in life or else he gets terribly depressed!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/10/21

Well, that got … too grim, probably! Anyway, let’s talk about horses. You wouldn’t know it now, but back before Snuffy Smith was ever dreamed up, Barney Google was a wildly popular media property, and that popularity was almost entirely driven by Spark Plug, Barney’s universally beloved horse, to the extent that for a while the strip was called Barney Google and Spark Plug. And yeah, it’s been a while — like, literally 99 years — but surely King Features Syndicate and Hearst Communications, the current owners of the Spark Plug intellectual property, can capture lightning in a bottle here again, right? Spark Plug may have had his day, but Li’l Sparky will be the character whose ancillary marketing products every child will be asking for this summer, probably! Kids like horses still, right? Horses and wordplay? Horses and … newspaper comic strips?