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Gil Thorp, 9/2/24

Happy Labor Day, everybody! I guess it’s now an annual tradition for a continuity strip character to appear as Rosie the Riveter to promote the American labor movement. I’m going to take this opportunity to be a bit of a killjoy and point out that the now-iconic “We Can Do It!” poster was actually a piece of internal propoganda produced by Westinghouse Electric in 1942 in an attempt to get its employees to work harder; another poster from the same series provides pretty good evidence of where on the labor/capital divide the ultimate sympathies of the campaign lay. “We Can Do It!” was not associated with the “Rosie the Riveter” concept at the time, was not widely seen outside Westinghouse during the war, and was largely forgotten until the Washington Post Magazine did an article about patriotic wartime art in 1982. Much more famous at the time — and perhaps more in tune with the labor movement — was Norman Rockwell’s 1943 Rosie the Riveter cover for the Saturday Evening Post, which features Rosie chowing down on a sandwich on her lunch break while grinding a copy of Mein Kampf under her foot. Perhaps we can get Abbey Spencer or Sarah Morgan to do this pose next year.

Alice, 9/2/24

Most cartoonists are of course more interested in making jokes about “Ha ha, we call it Labor Day but nobody’s working” than they are exploring and celebrating advances in workers’ rights, of course, which is kind of funny considering most cartoonists are freelancers who don’t get paid holidays of any sort. Hey, Alice, maybe instead of lying around all day you should organize your workforce!

Hi and Lois, 9/2/24

I know the whole dynamic of the Thurstons’ marriage is that Irma is perpetually enraged about her husband’s laziness, but he very much does have a job that he goes to every weekday with Hi. Like, that’s an important part of the strip lore. He’s also not unionized, as he’s management (I’m basing this on the fact that he wears a tie to the office, but I think given the lingering 1950s aesthetic that’s a pretty good rubric), so maybe this is just further topical commentary.

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Mary Worth, 9/1/24

Hey guys! Sorry I didn’t keep you up to date on the big drama at the Santa Royale Veterinarians Convention, which is that Dr. Ed ran into his ex Shiela and Estelle experienced a frission of jealousy about it. I know you’re all very emotionally invested in the Ed/Estelle relationship (or E/E, as its known in the fandom) and didn’t want to leave you with your feelings all up in the air about it! But don’t worry: today we’ve definitively established that Shiela is Dr. Ed’s former girlfriend, but they’re just good friends now. They each found partners better suited to them! And that goodness for that!

Panels from Slylock Fox, 9/1/24

This has got to be a real downer for the intelligent animals of Slylock Fox: they successfully rose up and overthrew humanity’s domination, but only had a couple decades at the top before a massive asteroid strike wiped out their ecosystem. Their rule was so brief that whatever sapient species eventually evolves from tiny sea lice in a billion years or so probably won’t even notice it in the paleontological record.

Panels from Beetle Bailey, 9/1/24

You ever think about how your bed has to work to support your weight while you’re asleep, and that what you consider to be the restful part of your day is actually when your bed suffers the most? Why would Beetle Bailey, whose title character is truly the patron saint of sloth, be the one to bring us this terrible information?

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith 8/31/24

You know, I’ve been doing this blog for two decades now, and yet somehow until today I’ve never paused to ask myself the question, “I wonder how Snuffy and Loweezy’s sex life is going?” It’s immediately clear that there’s no “good” answer to this — all the possibilities summon up further unpleasant thoughts and imagery, in their own way — but I’m here to tell you that the answer is “not well.” You can understand why Loweezy might have thought that tonight was a night she was going to get lucky: panel one makes it clear that Snuffy wore his extra-tight overalls to flatter his shapely buttocks, although I guess that’s just to entice Parson Tuttle to get wild and crazy and switch over from CBS to NBC tonight.

Mark Trail, 8/31/24

OK, sorry, I’m willing to accept that Mark is going to write a story about a movie director who accidentally trapped himself in his Catalina Island home with a bunch of lions and is even taking Rusty along on the trip, but if there’s one thing you know I won’t stand for, it’s abuse of Los Angeles geography. If you’re driving from LAX to the Catalina ferry terminal in Long Beach, Santa Monica is in the exact opposite direction of where you’re going! You just added at least an hour to your trip, depending on traffic, and there’s always traffic! Rusty needs to be banned from the next three fishing trips, minimum!

Hagar the Horrible, 8/31/24

Now, keep in mind, when Hagar says “epic,” he’s not talking like some 21st century bro; he literally means that his clan’s bard will be composing an epic oral poem about his warband’s voyage to the Kingdom of Mann and the Isles and the strange Brythonic magic they encountered there. The mutilation of Lucky Eddie’s face will be one of the “funny” parts.