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Blondie, 11/24/20

I genuinely enjoy the range of human facial expressions on display in the final panel here. Glasses Guy is interested, very interested, Token Carpool Lady is just beginning to shift from being intrigued to being disturbed, and Herb is miserable, absolutely miserable. Not sure what any of those emotions have to do with Dagwood’s gluttony, which should be entirely unsurprising to any of them, but I enjoy them nevertheless.

Dustin, 11/24/20

You can say a lot about Dustin’s retrograde cultural politics, and lord knows I have, but if you squint at it, it’s at least kind of progressive that they gave the self-loathing-dieting-verging-towards-eating-disorder to the dad character and not the mom. Anyway, I really like the last panel in today’s strip. He’s not even enjoying the donuts anymore, but he’s going to keep eating them anyway, presumably in a stubborn attempt to prove something to somebody.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/24/20

I’m also digging Sarah’s facial expression in panel two today. It’s clear she’s visualizing something like a digital anal thermometer that connects to your computer via Bluetooth, which the Morgan clinic will be happy to set you up with an installment plan for.

Gil Thorp, 11/24/20

Ah ha, finally we have the big fun moment in any Gil Thorp storyline, where the season’s two big plots are mashed awkwardly together. This football season those two plots are “Newcomer Corina Karenna is sexual catnip” and “two Mudlark QBs are duking it out for the top spot,” and the way they’re combining them is by having both boys come over to Corina’s house and engage in hand-to-hand combat, for … the starting QB job? Corinna’s affections? Doesn’t really matter, the important question is how oiled up they’re going to be while they do it.

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Mark Trail, 11/23/20

You know, Allen-era Mark Trail already upgraded Rusty from “ward” to “son” so I was wondering if he’d be retconned into a biological child of Mark and Cherry under the new regime, but with all this talk of dark secrets and Mark’s cloned lineage, and now new-look biker dude Doc wondering how Rusty will think about their relationship going forward … well, I’m just going to assume they’re all clones, and now they’ll just address each other respectfully as “pod-mate”.

Beetle Bailey, 11/23/20

I’m assuming that “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” is in quotes here because Rocky’s just using it as a general stand-in for “I used to have fun and/or cool,” not because he’s had sex. Nobody in Beetle Bailey has ever had sex. Please, I desperately need to hold onto that notion to stay sane. NO SEX IN BEETLE BAILEY, I FORBID IT.

Dick Tracy, 11/23/20

This pair of criminal masterminds hasn’t exactly set the world on fire with their crime skills, so I think it’d be pretty fitting if Daisy slipped and fell back onto Yeti and they both fell into the sewer and drowned. Dick never spots anything on the drone cam, the meteorite goes unmolested, everyone just kind of moves on with their lives. “Hey, we ever figure out what was up with those people who fell into comas?” Chief Patton asks. “I don’t think so, chief,” says Dick. “I guess it was just one of those things.”

Funky Winkerbean, 11/23/20

If you, like me, find Harry Dinkle intensely unlikeable, I’m happy to inform you that he spends his nights writing in agony, thinking of his past failures.

Pluggers, 11/23/20

Damn it, pluggers. Do you … do you really think you’re the only ones who like ice cream. Come on. Come on now. Give us some pluggers-specific content in the Pluggers syndicated newspaper strip or give it the fuck up

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Hi and Lois, 11/22/20

Hey, I get where Hi is coming from here! All of these strips have their gimmicks: wacky relatable Vikings, a sassy cat, children let loose in a world without any apparent adult intervention. Even Blondie and Family Circus, which are both more grounded “family” strips, feature heightened, exaggerated characters, each with their own set of recognizable tics. But Hi, and Hi’s world? Well, he’s just a regular middle-class guy living with regular people in regular American suburbia. There are no strict limits on his behavior but no simple prompts to action either — in other words, he can do pretty much anything, but has to choose on his own to do it, which is terrifying. In that sense, his dilemma is the most relatable on the comics page.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/22/20

Sorry, did that get a little Too Real? Well, here are some unlikeable Funky Winkerbean characters (BUT I REPEAT MYSELF! [rimshot]) making puns at each other. The throwaway panels at the top are actually crucial to today’s strip: without them, it looks like Harry is the only one doing irritating wordplay, but when we see the full picture we understand that we’re witnessing interlocked acts of mutual ongoing passive aggression.