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Blondie, 2/21/24

I am coming around to the opinion that the primary value of the syndicated newspaper comic strip Blondie is to provide anthropological insights into the mind and culture of the American middle-class boomer. Take today’s strip, for example: a real problem is identified (in this case, a formerly crucial communications channel becoming mostly a medium for delivering scams and garbage) but the issue is seen primarly as a personal affront to the viewpoint character imposed on him by whatever service worker he happens to interact with. Truly there is no clearer icon of “How can this be happening to Me, the protagonist of reality” than Dagwood impotently waving his fist in the air in panel three!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/21/24

That “feller” is almost certainly a self-insert of current Snuffy Smith artist John Rose, which means that Snuffy just missed a chance to have his own Creator craft a universe that he ruled like a king, for a mere $50! When he cast his critical eye across the canvas, did he not recognize his own lumpy nature in the scene’s imperfections?

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Mary Worth, 2/20/24

OK, I’ll officially be back on this storyline’s side again if instead of manfully failing to mention those inconvenient paternity test results and stepping up as a fake dad, Keith instead spirals into a world of paranoia where he questions everything he thought he knew. Kitty did keep Sonia a secret from him all these years, though if she wasn’t really his daughter I guess it was less “keeping her a secret” so much as “not telling him about a person who wasn’t related to him and isn’t any of his business.” Also, she didn’t tell him, a guy she slept with a few times 20 years ago, about a fake vegan with a dumb hat who kept hanging around and who seemed interested in a sexual/predatory way in Kelly or maybe in Sonia, who can say, but the important thing is that she kept Keith in the dark about him! Again, some might call this less “keeping Keith in the dark” and more “not keeping a guy she slept with a few times 20 years ago up to date about her current personal drama, because she hasn’t talked to him in 20 years so why would she tell him about this specifically,” but the important thing is that Keith is becoming increasingly emotionally unmoored, which, I cannot emphasize enough, I support.

Gasoline Alley, 2/20/24

OK, fine, it turns out the shocking and disturbing news in Gasoline Alley isn’t about nightmarish genetic experiments but rather the fact that they’re going to rename Gasoline Alley, presumably because of woke. I guess “Gasoline Alley” is the name of a specific geographical location within the strip, but if it is they haven’t made an overt reference to it in years, and I think it would be very funny if the city council within the strip had the awesome power to change the name of the very universe that contained their entire reality.

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Dennis the Menace, 2/19/24

Let me tell you, as a guy who writes jokes for a living, that no matter how bad you think the jokes on this website are, there many more that I’ve thought up that are much worse. It’s OK, your brain should be constantly generating jokes more or less involuntarily if you’re in this biz, but it is important that you be able to filter through them. Like, if you looked at a grandfather clock, and thought to yourself “Ho, ho, this thing is the grandfather of TikTok,” that’s fine, it’s perfectly normal, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. But should you tell that joke to somebody else and expect them to enjoy it? No. Should you put that joke in the mouth of a very young child, someone who would never come up with it or enjoy it if they heard it, in a syndicated newspaper comic strip? Also no.

The Phantom, 2/19/24

So, it turns out that the current Phantom storyline really has been mostly the big purple guy forcing his family to listen to him go on and on about this weird dream he had, which is about one of his ancestors who was taking his bride back from Europe (?) to his African lair, but they got captured by a bad guy for a while and he was chained up but figured out a way to break free, after … well, it’s not clear how long, but weeks or possibly months, and then he took the chains home with him, as a reminder. Anyway, it was mostly boring but today’s strip is very funny because apparently they’re having a big fight about this on their wedding day. Ha ha, I guess you shouldn’t have agreed to an arranged marriage (?) to the heir to a line of African-based superhero vigilantes if you aren’t up for this sort of symbolism-laden bullshit, random Victorian-era European lady! Now you’re trapped in “the Skull Cave” with no way back home! I myself would not have agreed to anything that would end with me living someplace called “the Skull Cave,” personally.

Blondie, 2/19/24

This one is a real missed opportunity, in my opinion. If Dagwood had simply said “Not really” in the first panel and then the next two panels consisted of his barber cutting his hair in awkward silence, it would have been the funniest Blondie strip created in the last 50 years.