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Arctic Circle, 1/31/20

Another one of the new strips I’m reading, in addition to weird tales of stir-crazy dads, is Arctic Circle, and before you smugly say “Hey, what are these penguins doing in the Arctic,” know that their migration there is part of the bit. Anyway, the strip mostly seems to be the penguins looking on his horror as ecological collapse leads to narwhals savagely impaling each other, so it should be a hoot to follow!

Pros and Cons, 1/31/20

Pros and Cons, meanwhile, promises to extend the Law and Order model by including not just cops and prosecutors but defense attorneys and psychiatrists in its examination of the criminal justice system. Or so the King Features site would have you believe; this week features people who without that intro would read as generic white collar professionals making extremely broad social commentary in various eating and drinking establishments. Still, you can see the strip’s highbrow aspirations here: where else on the comics page will those fat cat modern architects, who greedily demand payment for the professional services they provide, get what’s coming to them? In Blondie? In Hi and Lois? I think not.

Dennis the Menace, 1/31/20

Damn, this strip is having a particularly non-menacing week. “America’s lovable late night clown prince, Jimmy Fallon, is keeping me from getting the rest I need to excel at school” isn’t quite as non-menacing as “These onions are bullying my eyes!”, but it’s pretty close.

Six Chix, 1/31/20

As a certified public transit enthusiast, I’m very glad the influential comic strip industry is weighing on one of my pet peeves. While many people who don’t routinely take transit focus on point-to-point speed, they fail to take waiting time into consideration, and often don’t see the point of funding frequent service. [low muttering] But headways low enough to allow passengers to “show up and and go” at the time of their choice [muttering grows louder, shouts of “get him off” become audible] are often more important [I am physically dragged off stage, but break free] than express service when it comes to [a net falls over me, leaving me unable to flee] the passenger exper[a single tranquilizer dart hits home and I lose consciousness]

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Daddy Daze, 1/30/20

So this week I’ve decided to add some new strips to my rotation, and one of them is Daddy Daze, billed by King Features as being about “Paul, the single dad who amicably shares custody of little Angus with ex-wife Amy, as he juggles an at-home job and domestic duties.” Admittedly I’ve only been reading it for a week or so, but it seems to be more about “Paul, a single dad imprisoned in some featureless void with only a preverbal infant for company, eventually driven to madness by his loneliness and inventing increasingly deranged and nightmarish imagery out of his son’s babbling.” It’s real grim stuff.

Judge Parker, 1/30/20

So one of the ongoing Judge Parker plots is that Sophie, still suffering PTSD after her kidnapping, is, much to Abbey’s consternation, hesitant to apply to college because really, why bother, why should we act like any of us have a future, anyway? But it seems she’s now discovered a way to add meaning in her life at least in the short term, by helping her family friend and actual criminal Judge Parker Emeritus get elected mayor. Sophie’s political views are somewhat eclectic, ranging from “climate change is bad” to “any self-respecting polity ought to have a fleet of secret flying death robots to wreak havoc on its enemies,” so she should do great with Future Mayor Parker’s campaign, which mostly seems based on the idea that “Uh hey guys I went to jail for a while and it turns out jail sucks.”

The Lockhorns, 1/30/20

Have I ever liked Leroy Lockhorn? No, of course not. He is, inherently, not a likable character. But do I want to see him hurled to his death off the roof of whatever depressing suburban office building he works in? No. That’s too much. It’s too much!

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Beetle Bailey, 1/29/20

Well, I have to say I’m impressed. If you had told me yesterday that Beetle Bailey was going to add a small but significant fact to its canon of deep lore, never in a million years would I have settled on “Major Greenbrass is General Halftrack’s brother-in-law.” I’m reasonably sure this has never come up in the strip before? It’s also possible that the Major, feeling secure in the knowledge that General Halftrack and his wife hate each other, assumes Amos has never taken any interest in his wife’s family and maybe doesn’t even know who her brother is.

Also, I’m hesitant to say that I, someone who’s never served in the military, knows more about military ranks than Beetle Bailey, a U.S. Army themed strip that’s been running for decades, but … generally you graduate from West Point or ROTC as a second lieutenant and from there it’s only three more promotions until you’re a major, so I’m not sure how Greenbrass was promoted five times and is still only a major — unless he got busted down in rank for some infraction twice, only to be bailed out by his hapless brother-in-law, or, in my theory I’m growing more and more fond of, the man he’s tricked into thinking he’s his brother-in-law.

Mary Worth, 1/29/20

If Mary has an eye for anything, it’s Charterstone residents trying to subtly move out without telling her, just like Iris is doing. And why wouldn’t she want to spend more time in her hot boyfriend’s cool loft apartment downtown in the Santa Royale Arts District, rather than in a hellscape suburban condo complex full of old people, one of whom is her awful ex-boyfriend. Anyway, looks like Tommy’s going to have a lot of time alone in Charterstone now that his mom’s moving most of her clothes to Zak’s. Let’s pray he gets into some terrible mischief, because if we’re going to endlessly focus on the Westons and the Beedles, we should at least be spending time with the most entertaining person out of all of them.

Hagar the Horrible, 1/29/20

It seems that Hagars’s Norway hasn’t been entirely Christianized yet, and for the reasons made clear here: the omnipotent God of the Christians isn’t really someone you can have an argument with, you know? The Norse pantheon was always a little closer to the common man, even as they were shipwrecking him.