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Mary Worth, 11/17/20

I love that this picture is the one that Tommy is staring at fiercely to reassure himself that he’s still a good person who’s made a lot of progress despite his current bumpy romantic situation. “Damn it, would a loser have a ripped bod like that? No! I good enough and I’m beefy enough to earn respect, and I’m going to step up my volunteer work with that weightlifting charity to make sure the kids of tomorrow have a head start when it comes to making gains!”

Shoe, 11/17/20

“And I don’t have any? Because I’m a bird? And have wings instead? Is that the joke? God damn it, one of these days the joke here is going to be about how we’re birds. It has to happen eventually!”

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Blondie, 11/16/20

I strongly agree with the consensus here: this is a disturbing daydream! I feel like I need to know more details in order to really gauge the contours of how disturbing it is, though. The “no doors” thing is the most disturbing part by far, and is the key to whole scenario. Like, did they just wake up there together with no way out, slowly coming to terms with the fact that they’re trapped with each other in some Sartre-esque office hell? Or were they dropped down into a roofless office from above, and expected to fight each other to the death for the amusement of a hooting crowd of spectators?

Slylock Fox, 11/16/20

The first time I commented on this strip, I had a lot of thoughts about how Max could maximize his fashion potential at this seaside wedding blowout. But this time around, all I could think was: Max, are you seriously considering upstaging the bride by wearing white? How dare you!

Dennis the Menace, 11/16/20

The most menacing thing here is how grateful the piggy bank looks for Dennis’s promise to never trade him in for a wallet (Dennis is definitely going to trade him in for a wallet).

Family Circus, 11/16/20

I’ve never fully understood what the deal is supposed to be with Jeffy, an actual toddler, wearing cuffed jeans and penny loafers around the house at all times, but I will say that the look is not improved by shirtlessness.

Dick Tracy, 11/16/20

Oh, by the way, Neo-Chicago is blanketed by drones allowing omnipresent, crystal-clear police surveillance of everyone at all times, just in case you were wondering!

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Hi and Lois, 11/15/20

From the fall of 1992 to the spring of 1993, I was a freshman at Cornell University, and at Cornell — and, I assume, at many other universities, although I can only speak to my experience — Spin Doctors’ debut album, Pocket Full of Kryptonite, was absolutely inescapable, and after a few weeks I definitely wanted to escape it, though I admit that during the brief window before I came to loathe the band I did put “Two Princes” on a mix tape for a young lady I was trying, without success, to woo. Anyway, I had mostly managed to purge the music from my head until someone over at Waker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC decided to slip the phrase “pocket full of Kryptonite” into today’s strip, which made me wonder if the album title was maybe a reference to something else, but nope, it’s just a lyric from the album, so there you go: Spin Doctors content in today’s Hi and Lois. While on this journey of discovery, I did learn that that Spin Doctors’ Wikipedia article has one of my very favorite Wikipedia Things, a bar chart showing the comings and goings of various musicians in the band’s lineup over the years, from which I learned that John Popper, later of Blues Traveler, another band unavoidable in Cornell dorms in the early-to-mid ’90s, was briefly in Spin Doctors, which I found noteworthy enough to mention to my wife. Her responses were “Am I supposed to care about this” and “I cannot think of two bands I care less about,” which, I guess, is ultimately why I have a blog, because I have to tell someone this stuff. Anyway, thanks a lot for making me think about this, Hi and Lois. Thanks a lot.

Six Chix, 11/15/20

Honestly, I’m not even sure what to say about this except that I’m kind of in awe of the series of free associations that brought this … allegory? metaphor? fever dream? … into existence. I assume that after utterly defeating the dinosaurs on the court, the asteroids high fived one another, leapt far up into space, and then plummeted back down to earth, obliterating both their vanquished foes and themselves in an apocalyptic blast.

Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/15/20

Ha ha, Parson, that so-called “currency” doesn’t do you much good in a community that mostly exists as a pre-monetary economy in which social ties mediate almost all economic exchange, does it?