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Gasoline Alley, 11/28/20

The current Gasoline Alley storyline is too boring and confusing for me to get into here, and in that sense it is quite frankly like most Gasoline Alley storylines. But I do want to point out that Gasoline Alley is one of those strips where the characters age over the years, which makes them not only more and more wrinkled but also results in them learning and growing as human beings. Why, it was a mere 13 years ago that Slim reacted to the presence of basketball-playing youths in his neighborhood by attempting to kill them by hiring a guy to drop a meteorite on them from a helicopter. But now it’s the year 2020, and Slim has learned that murder is one of those things that might’ve been OK in its historic context but is no longer “woke.”

Dennis the Menace, 11/28/20

Henry’s facial expression is kind of puzzling but it honestly looks like he’s trying to suppress laughter? “What a little idiot,” he’s thinking. “She’s not even in the top decile globally.”

Beetle Bailey, 11/28/20

How are things going over at Beetle Bailey? Well, the Camp Swampy boys are rounding up terrified civilians at gunpoint so … not great, I guess!

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Folks, do not forget: in just over a week, on December 5th, at 6 pm Pacific/9 pm Eastern, yet another Zoom version of my beloved comedy show, The Internet Read Aloud, is happening! Special ZOOMSUKKAH edition!

Here is the Zoom link, which will let you into the show at the appointed time, and here is the Facebook event, if you find those useful for your event record-keeping!

But now, the moment you’ve been waiting for … the comment of the week:

“I’m not sure if Thayer is absolutely disgusted at the situation or if his bean-shaped head forces his his mouth into a permanent grimace like some kind of Hapsburg jaw.” –ArtOfWargames, on Twitter

And the runners up! Very funny!

“‘Pun intended, I assume.’ ‘Sadly, yes.’ The Funky Winkerbean mission statement.” –Pozzo

“I’m not American so I’m not that familiar with turkeys, but is it normal for them to come unwrapped in ordinary cardboard boxes? I’d expect some kind of refrigeration is required, and while I appreciate the effort to reduce plastic waste, I’d also expect most people wouldn’t want a cardboard box soaked in turkey juice. Could this all be leading up to the end of Funky Winkerbean — not through cancer as we all expected, but from mass food poisoning? Please say yes.” –Truckosaurus

“A strip smugly mocking other comics for predictable gags is still preferable to another comic about Trixie and her fucking sunbeam.” –Rosstifer

“Sure, just about everyone enjoys ice cream cones, but the plugger, in his aw-shucks, salt-of-the-earth wisdom, knows that cones are too good to be restricted to a dessert. So it’s natural enough that, with Thanksgiving just round the corner, he’s decided to help himself to a scoop of mashed potatoes with gravy, topped by a scrumptious ball of spinach and stuffing.” –Urlance Woolsbane

“That better be mutagenic slime that Daisy just stepped in because the biggest disappointment in this strip to date is that his head isn’t shaped like a damned daisy.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Christ, Rocky. Beetle just asked if you had any Vicodin, he doesn’t need your life story.” –Bill L

“It appears someone is trying to steal the refrigerator, but these two don’t care. They’re on break!” –nescio

“‘Are you expecting a big crowd for Thanksgiving?’ asks Claudia with a palpably false smile, desperately trying to pretend that she’s never heard of covid.” –Rita Lake

“Normally Slylock Fox ‘True or False’ questions teach kids facts about science and nature, but I guess children need to learn how a handful of megaconglomerates exert huge control over popular culture through their extensive intellectual property portfolios too.” –Schroduck

“Ed does not seem to bring himself any joy with those malapropisms. I guess because he doesn’t know he’s making them. So maybe Pam’s smile means, ‘Look at that old bastard. Fuckin’ up and doesn’t even know it.’” –Joe Blevins

“METEORITE, NOT A GIANT POTATO, IT REALLY ISN’T, PLEASE DON’T THINK IT’S A POTATO, BECAUSE IT’S NOT, OKAY?” –made of wince

“Loretta, out of pure spite, has made a big Thanksgiving meal for just the two of them so Leroy will be forced to eat the leftovers. Leroy, out of pure spite, will choke down every bite of those leftovers, making pithy comments about Loretta’s cooking the whole time. This is why their marriage has lasted for so long.” –TheDiva

“Good thing they have that baby gate up to prevent Rex from wandering the house and accidentally committing surgery.” –Voshkod

“In the 23rd century Reedhoover_ix04d will think of some witticism about how pluggers put their shuttle crafts up on blocks when the orbiting junkyard is out of dilithium crystals, and the circuits in his monoclonal cerebrum chip will automatically transmit it to the collective mind of all the strip’s fans, via its aol.com E-mail address.” –seismic-2

“Tommy’s hard work seems to be convincing Brandy that he is on the straight and narrow, because as we all know, simple repetitive tasks are not something you can do while on drugs, nor are they something that are made much more tolerable by being high.” –pugfuggly

Remember: If you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for a mere three dollars a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon Supporter! If you just want to give me money directly, you can put some scratch in my tip jar, or back me on Patreon! Thanks to all for your support and readership!

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Pluggers, 11/27/20

I’ve done a lot of “This is not what a plugger is, come on, man” yelling on this blog of late, so you’d be forgiven for thinking I might rant similarly here. But if you, like me, enjoy the Star Trek franchise enough to spend any amount of time interacting with its online fanbase, you know that there are large swaths of said fanbase who are very mad about any of the newer shows because they’re too “woke” and violate series canon and aren’t real Trek and the only thing those people more passionate about than that is arguing about which of the older shows are also not real Trek. So yes, I regret to inform you that plugger Trekkies are absolutely 100% a thing.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/27/20

As various pharmaceutical giants announce what look to be very effective coronavirus vaccines and we begin to glimpse the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, we need to start looking back and assessing what happened over the past strange and sad year. And while it’s just a tiny little blip on the cultural landscape, I think we should take a moment to marvel at the fact that the only newspaper comic strip dedicated to medical drama took the biggest real-world medical story in the past hundred years and used it as grist for “Rex reacts grumpily to minor domestic irritations” material.

Mary Worth, 11/27/20

You think that’s going to impress Brandy, Tommy? A big pyramid of liquor bottles pointing triumphantly at the red star of communism? Brandy likes patriotic American boys, so better luck next time.