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Mary Worth, 2/25/21

Yeah, Saul, your life sure is a roller-coaster, isn’t it? You know, it’s always something! Either Mary’s coming by to force some horrible leftovers on you, or, uh, well, that’s pretty much it, as you don’t really interact much with anyone else in your condo complex. Say, what do you think Eve’s up to? Oh, did her dog get scared by the thunder and run away, giving you an opportunity for much needed human interaction? That’s wonderf– I mean, that’s horrible! Horrible!

Crankshaft, 2/25/21

An earlier post on this blog predicted that Crankshaft, the title character of the comic strip Crankshaft, would serve the role of the “holy fool” in this plotline, judging an uncarved block of ice to be truly the most profound work of art of all. Instead, he will be playing the part of the “wise simpleton,” seeing through the bullshit that blinds the supposedly educated. We regret the error.

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Dick Tracy, 2/24/21

A little sniff before she fixes dinner, if you follow her. If you get her drift. Her snow drift. She’s talking about cocaine! I feel like what with all the weird escapades with “Pouch” and his stolen balloon “Blue” that this strip has been going on for the past several weeks, we’ve lost sight of the true star of this storyline: cocaine, and the recreational consumption and illegal distribution thereof.

Blondie, 2/24/21

Look, obviously the Blondie strips where she’s taking notes on the “[Insert Profession/Hobbyist Group To Make Jokes About Here] Group Luncheon” are just excuses to make some easy jokes riffing on widely accepted stereotypes about the profession or hobbyist group in question, and that’s a perfectly valid joke template for a long-running legacy strip like Blondie to have. I’m just saying, though, you really should have your stereotypes correct if you’re going down this road. Like, when I see someone with a sweater tied around their neck like this, I think “leader of the rich kid camp across the lake about to challenge our protagonists to a snobs vs. slobs battle in an ’80s comedy,” not “theater kid.”

Dustin, 2/24/21

I get that this is supposed to be a joke where an adult tells a child about how things used to be, but: Dustin is canonically supposed to be boomerang kid who came home from college and never left, and his younger sister is still in high school, so I don’t think we’re supposed to think of him as much past his mid 20s, meaning he was born in the mid-to-late ’90s; meanwhile, Facebook opened to the general public in 2006 and surpassed MySpace as the most heavily used social networking site in 2008, so “likes” have been a social currency for basically his entire life. On the other hand, Hayden, age seven, probably doesn’t use social media at all and when he starts it will be on some app whose feedback mechanisms are entirely strange and foreign to the rest of us. What I’m trying to say is, if you’re doing an entire strip about generation gaps, you at least need to know what various generations are into.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/24/21

“I think I basically get the urge to have a place where you sleep indoors and spend time when you’re not at work. But why would you want that place to be nice?”

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Pluggers, 2/23/21

I have become increasingly concerned that there’s some kind of edict coming down from Pluggers HQ that all Pluggers panels have to be broadly relatable, and so we’ve started focusing less on pluggers and what makes them special and instead are just getting panels about things that literally all humans do. The worst thing about today’s panel is that this plugger has a sly look on his face, like he’s getting away with something. Sir, the doctor is literally getting a more accurate assessment of your weight this way! There’s nothing sneaky at all going on here!

Slylock Fox, 2/23/21

In the first panel, the guy at the window is thinking “God damn it! That rotten kid has used all my good sausages for his dumb little snowman tableau!” In the second panel, he’s thinking “Oh my god … the snowman has come to life … and he’s got a taste for flesh.”