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Blondie, 11/2/24

The Blondie creative team is usually very locked in to whatever big calendar full of real and fake holidays that’s clearly hanging up in the writer’s room, so today’s misstep is actually kind of surprising to me. Sure, it was possible, weeks ago when this strip was written, that game six of the World Series might’ve been played on November 1, but it was also possible that one of the teams would wrap it up in five games or less, as one of them in fact did (go Dodgers!). Anyway, I get why you’d risk it though, the glaring error is absolutely worth it to deliver this tight, flawless joke about a mailman streaming the baseball game from the night before, so his trainee has to talk to one of the mail route customers, like the regular guy usually does, about something that we don’t need to bother explaining, you know, the usual customer-mailman conversations we all know and love and have every day.

Marvin, 11/2/24

Of the weird holdover jokes from an entirely different era of gender relations that routinely pop up in newspaper comics, I have to say that “haha, it’s women’s job to cook but this particular woman is really bad at it!” are my absolute least favorite. The particular woman in question could be the speaking character’s mother, wife, or (as in this case) daughter, each possibility carrying with it its own specific unpleasant vibe. That said, I do think today’s Marvin is kind of funny because usually you think of “runing your appetite” as something you do with snacking, but Roy is just straight-up eating a whole actual meal here. Like he knows Jenny’s cooking is terrible, he wants no part of it, and he’s just made his own dinner early, because he’s fully self-sufficient.

Beetle Bailey, 11/2/24

Some days I think I’ve left the snickering sexual innuendo I was prone to in this blog’s early days behind, but then I encounter a strip like “Lt. Fuzz decides to horn in on General Halftrack’s threesome,” sigh heavily, and realize I will simply not be able to help myself. Anyway, here’s today’s Beetle Bailey, in which Lt. Fuzz decides to horn in on General Halftrack’s threesome.

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Happy November, all! And there’s nothing happier than the comment of the week!

“The robot looks like he’s been waiting a long time to squeeze this question in. How long as he been sitting there listening to the girls spout malapropisms? Days? Weeks? Being a machine, he doesn’t need to eat or sleep, and being eldritch horrors, neither do they.” –Peanut Gallery

And your very funny runners up are a delight!

“I like how Tater’s costume seems to to be an actual hollowed-out potato? Makes sense: they can still eat it afterwards (if he doesn’t soil it) and there’s no sense wasting good burlap.” –pugfuggly

“I guess Granny Creeps wasn’t protein deprived as a child. Looks like witchin’ pays better than chicken stealin’ in Hootin’ Holler.” –But What Do I Know?

“If they had been driving through a different part of town at that moment Joey might’ve said ‘I want to be a lake!’ or ‘I want to be a Batteries Plus store!’ or ‘I want to be an expressway!’” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Marvin sure is a lucky kid. Robots don’t usually give you this clear an warning that they’re about to peel your skin off and remove your internal organs to run diagnostics on your power supply and other internal hardware.” –jroggs

“I appreciate the detail of Max watching in terror the body horror wreak havoc around him but not letting that stop him from getting some candy. You go, little mouse, and enjoy your tasty treats.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Jeffy is wearing his father’s old coat with the sleeves comically rolled up, whereas Billy has a perfectly tailored Superman costume. So where on this spectrum does PJ fall? I’m guessing dog costume, as in a costume meant for the dog, who refuses to wear it.” –Rex_Thrillho, on Twitter

“They ain’t laughin’ at ya on accounta yer costume, Jughaid! — they’re laughin’ at ya on accounta yer backwoods colloquialisms ‘n’ elisions!’” –Bob Tice

“He asks that as though he already knows how people guts feel. I’d keep an eye on this kid.” –Pozzo

“I love the constant reminders that Pierre is literally the best-behaved dog in history, content to pass his days gazing quietly upon his owners in quiet admiration. This was the level of responsibility that was too much for Wilbur. We all like making fun of Dawn, but honestly the fact that she’s even alive is a pretty heroic achievement.” –Dan

“Nah, Rex is more likely to go into pedantic teacher mode with them. ‘Well, Blonde-Haired Adoptive Son, that’s an interesting question. You see there are many different forms of human viscera, and each have their distinct textural properties. The intestines, for example, have a wet, slippery feel that might be comparative to the interior contents of a pumpkin, but the liver…’” –TheDiva

“I bet you that their ‘compromise’ is to simply have the wedding right there at the vet clinic, so that Ed can immediately get right to work operating on bulldogs instead of celebrating his honeymoon (‘At least someone will have a sharp tool inside them tonight,’ Estelle will sigh with resignation).” –2+2=7

“Count Thorpula has a personality. That’s how you can tell it’s a costume.” –MKay

“I prefer to think that the creators Rex Morgan cleverly dodged a lawsuit from Star Wars, Disney, Marvel, DC, Nintendo, et al. There’s no way those kids aren’t dressed as Spider Man and Wario under those coats.” –Old School Allie Cat

“I like the kid who just bought a huge, grotesque monster mask and didn’t care enough to add any other costume — he’s just wearing it with his everyday clothes. Especially since it came with huge, leering eyes, which means he can’t actually see anything as he traverses his neighborhood streets at night. In fact, Gertie thinks he’s so cool that she’s giving him extra candy from her dog-food bowl of loose M&Ms!” –BigTed

“The French Foreign Legion has a history of taking in criminals, runaways, orphans, and other pliable castoffs of society to fill the ranks and help enforce a brutal colonial regime on the indigenous population. But behind the man who wields the gun are several more doing the support work to keep the legion running and supplied, and skills like that require normal civilians. Cooks like this one cannot be blind to the mission of violence they support, so the Legion has ways of breaking them, by having them befriend sentient chickens, before having to kill them to feed the troops in the field.” –Philip

“I like to think there’s some puppy play going on in today’s Mary Worth as well. Mary is clearly the one responsible for Wilbur receiving invites to his exes’ weddings and she has to be the one making him go. I can only figure she’s doing the fabled dog-owner thing of rubbing a dog’s nose in its mess to teach it a lesson and stop it from repeating the bad behavior. How many more failed relationships will Mary have to rub Wilbur’s nose into before he finally stops tracking them into her apartment? It might look impossible to do from the outside but Mary has successfully trained Wilber to salivate after she rings a bell so she’s really hopeful this current training will stick soon.” –Lionheart

“Sorry, Beetle, regardless of what you saw on MASH or read in Catch-22, the military really doesn’t do Section 8 separation anymore. Instead, you’re looking at months with Dr. Bonkus and then an other-than-honorable discharge, which is just not going to look good to your future civilian employee. Buck up! You’ve been in the Army over 50 years; your pension is going to be great!” –Voshkod

“After this pleasant thought, Mary immediately begins scheming to get Wilbur and Shiela together. What’s the ship name? Shilbur? Wiela?” –Navigator

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Mary Worth, 11/1/24

Aww, who came to Dr. Ed and Estelle’s last-minute, let’s-make-it-legal-before-we-have-another-dumb-fight wedding? Well, from right, we have: Saul and Eve (intense dog owners, probably repeat customers at Dr. Ed’s clinic due to obsessive worrying over their pets’ health), Dr. Ed’s former lover Shiela, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (officiant), Mary, some guy (maybe supposed to be Dr. Jeff except his temples aren’t grey and also his nose and chin look wrong???), and, of course, Wilbur, making his second appearance at an ex’s wedding in as many years. It’s good that this is happening to him! I think he should continue to suffer further humiliation until he’s learned his lesson (he never will). Maybe he’ll get an invite from Fabiana when she finally marries her cousin, dare to dream!

Crock, 11/1/24

I dunno, maybe I’m reading too much into a kind of nothing joke, but I feel like at least a little of the implication here is that the wife is going to be eating this dinner too, right? “Don’t eat the dinner, honey … the dinner is me … the dinner is me” (she’ll never hear it because nobody listens to their voice mail anymore, haha kids today am I right)

Beetle Bailey, 11/1/24

“Do the creators of Beetle Bailey know what ‘puppy play’ is?” is the sort of question that I will never, ever want to actually learn the answer to but also will never, ever be able to stop thinking about.