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Beetle Bailey, 9/14/18

This is a cartoon clearly written by someone who’s heard about how the Kids Today like to take pictures of their meals, but has no idea why or ever how they do so. Like, some embarrassed colorist has attempted to make it look like Sarge is holding his phone, but that’s clearly supposed to be an old-school point-and-shoot camera.

Hagar the Horrible, 9/14/18

There are like two entirely different things happening in this strip. On the one hand, you have “ancient history” apparently being understood by Hamlet’s parents to mean “Hagar’s relationships with pre-Helga girlfriends” or maybe “Hagar’s infidelity early in his relationship with Helga,” thus injecting Hamlet’s eagerness to discuss his school lessons with his parents’ long-simmering marital drama. On the other hand, you have whatever “school” a Viking chieftain’s son attends apparently letting its young Norse charges in on the true international illuminati conspiracy that is biding its time until civilization rises up again to be worth ruling, watching all things with its unblinking pyramidal Eye.

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Pluggers, 9/13/18

Here’s some “behind the scenes” scoop: I was originally going to just do a drive-by “Haw haw pluggers don’t use computers” joke here, but then I thought: you know, in reality, pluggers have been going online for years now, as any visit to Facebook clearly indicates. And so I decided instead to do a deep dive on the rewards program at the Golden Corral, aka the “Good as Gold Club” and God damn if the FAQ isn’t a veritable gold mine of plugger-tastic questions presumably frequently asked by pluggers everywhere, including:

• “Why am I having trouble viewing my email?”
• “My coupon will not print correctly, what should I do?”
• “I do not have a printer, what should I do?” (“SOLUTION: If you cannot access a printer (at home or perhaps a public library), you will need to call ahead and speak with the management at your preferred Golden Corral restaurant to inquire about presenting your coupon via a mobile device” sorry about how much time you have to spend on the phone with pluggers talking about this, Golden Corral managers)
• “I received my birthday coupon, but my spouse did not, what should I do?” (“Most likely, this means that you and your spouse (or family member) both registered in one of our restaurants using the same email address.” HELL YEAH YOU KNOW PLUGGERS AND THEIR SPOUSES SHARE EMAIL ADDRESSES)

Anyway, other than the oblique reference to a “birthday coupon” there’s no actual description on the site of what you get for being a Good as Gold Club member or why you’d want to join. I guess only true pluggers understand the value of selfless loyalty to a family-style chain restaurant brand.

Dennis the Menace, 9/13/18

There’s been what’s to me a fairly noticeable shift in the Dennis the Menace art this week, accompanied by a change in signature from this:

To a more legible “S. Ketcham.” According to Wikipedia, “Hank Ketcham retired from the comic strip in 1994, turning over production of the strip to his assistants Ron Ferdinand and Marcus Hamilton. They continued it as a ‘zombie strip’ after Ketcham’s death in 2001, where the two, and since 2010, Scott Ketcham, continue the strip.” I guess the previous signature is a “Hamilton,” and even though Scott (Hank’s son) has been involved for eight years now, I assume he’s now … drawing it? Or something? I can’t find any other news about this online at the moment. Anyway, I doubt that this personnel change is going to lead to big changes like adding a new character to the strip, because you don’t run a cartoon for nearly 70 years because people like change, but just look at how horrified Alice is by the very thought of it! I’m not sure if her main worry is having another menacing offspring, or the process of childbirth, or just having sex with Henry again, but she’s definitely cringing in disgust at some combination of the three.

Mary Worth, 9/13/18

Now, I know everyone’s about to attack Toby for being cruel or heartless or whatever, but keep this in mind: you don’t spend the best years of your life married to Ian Cameron without occupying a great deal of your time calculating your loved ones’ remaining lifespan and figuring out the precise length of time one might be expected to mourn them when they finally, blessedly, die.

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Spider-Man, 9/12/18

God bless this hilarious audience of nogoodniks, who are already extremely riled up and shaking their fists in rage before the meeting has even begun! I’m particularly intrigued by the phrase “so-called crime summit”: is our bespectacled thug questioning the very nature of “crime,” rejecting a label placed on his business activities by a government apparatus for which he holds no respect? Or is he disputing the term “summit,” since the theater setting seems to imply less a meeting of equals seeking consensus than a scenario where Kingpin and Golden Claw impose their will from the stage on a passive “audience” of lesser criminals?

Hi and Lois, 9/12/18

There are, in the end, two types of men in the world, and you have to decide which one you want to be. Are you a Thirsty, who’s so determined to assert his autonomy from his wife that he deliberately gorges himself at lunch to the point of nausea, sky-high cholesterol be damned? Or are you a Hi, who obediently sips a cup of broth for lunch so that by the time he gets home his stomach is empty, so empty, and he can properly stuff himself to bursting under his wife’s cruel, stern eye, asking “Now is dinner finished?” before each course only to be told “Dinner is finished when I say it’s finished.”