Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 3/13/24

I’m not a huge fan of “Miss Buxley is the only sexually available female at Camp Swampy and the men all line up in hopes of being chosen by her, for sex,” but I do like that Rocky has shown up with a six-pack. Take a risk! Might not be what she likes but it also just might be, and you’ve got stand out from the pack somehow!

Gil Thorp, 3/13/24

I don’t know if they actually do full-on suplexes (suplices?) like this in high school wrestling, and I’m not going to look into it, either, because I’m afraid that if I plug “girl’s high school wrestling” into Google Image Search I’m going to end up on a watchlist. But this does happen, I have to imagine that it’s among the most exciting things to happen in the course of a bout, which is why I think it’s kind of odd to cut away literally before Inma’s opponent hits the floor to check in with Marty Moon and hear what he has to say about, like, hockey or whatever.

Mark Trail, 3/13/24

All the market research shows it: what the people want is a soap opera newspaper comic strip about somebody shitting themselves in the context of a musical performance. But of course, the industry’s last few shreds of dignity are preventing the syndicate from really pulling the trigger. Rex Morgan got close with the tale of a guy pretending to shit himself so that he could bump himself up from opener to headliner. But can we get closer still? What if the musician … wasn’t a person at all? Exciting news possibilities await!

Post Content

Gasoline Alley, 3/12/24

The big news down in Gasoline Alley is that City Hall is finally compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act! It also rejects the doctrine of the Trinity. First the town turns its back on fossil fuels, and now this????

Mary Worth, 3/12/24

“Keith has substituted one all-consuming obsession with another, and it doesn’t matter if he has to lie to himself or everyone else to achieve his goals. That’s the way!” –complete psychopaths

Post Content

Dick Tracy, 3/11/24

OK, fine, after my uninformed joking yesterday, I am back to reading the comics so you don’t have to and can inform you that (a) these strips are a flashback and (b) these two “dumb housecleaners” are actually retired FBI agents/Little Orphan Annie’s biological parents (you can tell by the lack of pupils, I guess?), who are somehow involved in thwarting the attempt to kidnap Oliver Warbacks. This is exactly what I don’t like about these kinds of retcons, honestly: now we have to believe that Warbucks and Annie were somehow tied together before she was even born — that’s her in utero there in panel two and three — when there was already a perfectly good origin story to their relationship (Warbucks bought her from a crooked orphanage to burnish his public image so he could keep selling defective artillery shells to that commie FDR).

Judge Parker, 3/11/24

Judge Parker artist Mike Manley is having health issues, and I have no insider information beyond that, but even though his name is on the strip a series of guest artists have filled in for him intermittently over the past few months. Today is the first showing from Gil Thorp’s Rod Whigham — I recognize those meaty hands and shocked eyelines anywhere. (This feels a bit like an echo of when then-Apartment 3-G artist Frank Bolle briefly filled in on Gil Thorp back in 2008.) Get well soon, Mike, but until then Rod’s going to be guiding us through a storyline where I assume the Spencer-Driver clan puts aside their differences and closes ranks to prevent Ann, last seen having a heated argument with this guy, from going away for murder.

Family Circus, 3/11/24

Aw, look how happy Jeffy looks here! He’s very sure he was born a whole person and isn’t an eldritch abomination assembeled out of various parts, and we should let him continue to hold that impression, even though it isn’t true.

Slylock Fox, 3/11/24

Look, the newspaper comics need all the help they can get, so its actually totally fine when Slylock Fox decides to cash in on all that SLICK SMITTY NUDE SLICK SMITTY GETTING OUT OF SHOWER SLICK SMITY DRIPPING WET search traffic.