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Dustin, 5/20/19

OK, I guess today I’m going to formalize what’s becoming a regular feature on this blog; this is another installment of Josh, A Gen-Xer And Thus A Neutral Party, Assesses The Accuracy Of Dustin, A Strip About The Clash Between Millennials And Baby Boomers That Blatantly Favors The Latter.

What today’s Dustin gets right: Millennials do seem to love astrology! Like, love it a little too much! It’s like a whole thing!

What today’s Dustin gets wrong: Millennials don’t get their horoscopes from a physical newspaper, and also don’t look at job ads in a physical newspaper, and also job ads in a physical newspaper are no longer a particularly useful way to find jobs.

Ha ha, but, horoscopes and the kids today though! Am I right folks?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/20/19

Kelly and Niki have become insanely square compared to their origin stories as a sass-talking goth and petty thief, respectively, but they and their pal Barfy McChokerson are the closest this strip still has to interesting characters, so I guess I’m glad to see them. What do you suppose is the deal with those guys over at the next table, the ones vibrating like tuning forks? Are they shaking in anxiety as they work on the nerve to rob the joint? Are they addicts who are starting to twitch uncontrollably as they go into withdrawal? Are they just chilly? Is the air conditioning up too high, and they were right on the edge of being cold and then made the mistake of ordering iced coffees? Should they have worn more layers?

Funky Winkerbean, 5/20/19

Say, it’s been a while since we checked in on the Les-Cayla marriage. How’s it going? Today’s strip really gives us a sense of the sweep of that whole relationship, from the early days when Cayla was still capable of being disappointed by Les, to today, when she’s just completely numb to his bullshit.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/19/19

Lots of today’s comics are doing special strips for Red Nose Day, but I’m only going mention one because otherwise it’d get pretty repetitive, and that one is going to be Snuffy Smith, because the point of Red Nose Day is to raise money to combat childhood poverty and there are few clearer examples in the comics of children living in poverty than the (literally, desperately) poor children of Hootin’ Holler.

Beetle Bailey, 5/19/19

You have to respect how acutely aware Miss Buxley is of the progress of General Haltrack’s sundowning: she knows that his “I’ve been in the army [X] years” diatribe is good for a solid 10 minutes where she won’t have to do anything but stand there and nod politely, and she’s going get it out of him even if she has to wave the calendar in his fact to start it. You also have to respect the comics colorist who made Halftrack a white-haired old man in the first flashback panel, then realized in the next panel that he was supposed to be young, but didn’t bother going back to fix their earlier mistake.

Family Circus, 5/19/19

Sure, this is a cute comic about how Sam the dog fetches Big Daddy Keane’s slippers and greets Grandma at the door and, uh, takes care of PJ when all the adults are ignoring him or gone altogether, but let’s not neglect Billy’s look of creeping panic in the center panel here. He feels like he has to denigrate Sam’s skills because he’s not good at anything and he’s never going be good at anything, and he knows it.

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Dick Tracy, 5/18/19

It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the new storyline of Dick Tracy once again involves dipping back into the comics nostalgia well, with Little Orphan Annie being dragged back from comics purgatory to dance for our throwback amusement. Why not Brenda Starr, another dormant property who is owned, like Annie and Dick Tracy, by Tribune Content Agency, and who’s also a reporter, which would let us get into all sorts of First Amendment issues with the not-real-into-civil-liberties police force of Neo-Chicago? But, no, I guess we’re gonna see Little Orphan Annie trying to integrate her way into Honeymoon’s social circle, hanging out with notorious crime family relative “Ugly” Crystal and … Kandikane Lane, who is, I have always assumed, an adult? And old enough that it’s just “off-putting” and not “creepy and legally actionable” that she’s partners with a man old enough to be an old-timey movie star? Anyway, more on all this as developments warrant, which will hopefully be never.

Family Circus, 5/18/19

Note that Billy here is in fact the guy with the ball. There can be only one explanation of why he’s still alive: Billy killed all those other kids as they tried to kill him. Billy is a smiling, triumphant murderer, walking back into his home with blood on his hands but no guilt in his heart.