On the subject of podcasts, best wishes to Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House.
It’s been well-documented that the Lockhorns are millennials. Even though this is word salad (can one doomscroll TikTok?) I appreciate that this is one of the few legacy strips making an effort to keep its non-aging characters continually updated, as opposed to… whatever was happening in Guy Gilchrist’s Nancy:
8/2/2015
Decided to check in on Mallard Fillmore cartoonist Bruce Tinsley. Last time I checked, about three months ago, his seldom-used Twitter account had been hacked by a Bitcoin spammer. Well, now the account has been suspended:
Tinsley’s in his 60s and presumably in ill health, he shouldn’t have to be dealing with this shit. Why isn’t King Features Syndicate doing anything about this?
As mentioned before, I’ve been on a quest to watch all 28 Blondie movies. I’ve made a page to put all my reviews so they’re all in one place. Also, I can include images. Currently I just have 15 more movies to go.
Nicely played, I get the reference 😉
My thoughts on the new Facebook app “Threads”
Dennis is being out-menaced by, of all people, Billy from The Family Circus. Shameful.
Something I came across when looking through early Blondie strips that I found kind of amusing is this short-lived feature called the Husbands’ Back Fence Club where readers were invited to send in their complaints about their spouses. Just a few months after Blondie and Dagwood’s big wedding and already the comic has pivoted to Battle of the Sexes, ball-and-chain type stuff. Here’s the first two strips in full:
07/01/1933
And the rest of them, cropped:
07/15/1933
07/22/1933
08/05/1933
I’m gonna keep posting on Twitter until I can’t, which by the looks of things might be sooner rather than later. Who knows how long Bluesky will last, but I’m on there now as well. As always, check out this page for all the places I’m at on the computer.
Today is the 20th anniversary of the first post I made here on rubbercat.net. I was a kid back then and it’s a little crazy to think that I’ve had this website for more than half my life. I’ve never mentioned this before, but the main impetus for creating it was that I’d been using the name Rubber Cat Productions in my zine and I feared all the URLS would be taken by the time I became an adult, so in addition to having a creative outlet I’d have some future insurance against that. Who knew they would just add new TLDs? As the internet continues to collapse, it is nice to have a space that I can control, free of the whims of social media and pressures of capital. Thank you for reading.
Spending most of my free time playing the new Zelda game, which has been an incredible experience. I love exploring caves and the underground depths. I am keeping a diary of my progress on my game blog.
Before she married Dagwood Bumstead, Blondie’s name was Blondie Boopadoop. That’s what Wikipedia says, that’s what King Features Syndicate says, that’s what the Library of Congress says. But… was it? Out of curiosity, I looked into it, and while “Boopadoop” had been used in official promotional material dating back to 1930, I have yet to find it used in an actual comic strip. A few caveats: my search was by no means exhaustive (it would be nice to have the collection IDW put out) the OCR might have missed something, or maybe there are some gaps in the archive. I would assume “Boopadoop” came from creator Chic Young, or at least had his approval, but it’s odd that he apparently never put it into the strip, so while it’s offical enough, it’s not 100% Comic Strip Canon. Not that the strip was necessarily super-strict about continuity, mind you, just ask the Woodleys’ missing children.
Below are some of my findings; it’s interesting that some of the comic strip’s storylines would also play out in the letters section.
Santa Fe New Mexican, August 23, 1930
Lebanon Daily News, October 8, 1930
The Windsor Star, March 12, 1932
Tampa Bay Times, December 20, 1942
Steel #1 (1977), via 13th Dimension
Maybe things were different in 1977, but in most Batman stuff I’ve read or seen it’s implied but never outright stated that the commish knows a secret identity or two, so I laughed at how blunt this answer is.
I watched the announcement that HBO Max is rebranding as just “Max.” I get it, on a basic level people don’t associate HBO with kids and family stuff, and they might reasonably assume HBO Max is just HBO and not all the other stuff they also have. I’m not sure renaming it “Max” fixes those issues, and dropping HBO – the 50-year old brand people already associate with “TV you have to pay for” – from the name of your streaming service seems like corporate malpractice. The most inexplicable decision to me is ditching the color purple in favor of blue. Everyone uses blue. Purple was fairly unique, it was key to the service’s identity, and it’d create continuity with the old service so millions of subscribers don’t go “wha happen?”
When they were talking about family shows they showed a graphic of Cartoon Network’s Summer Camp Island in the background, kind of a dick move considering they unceremoniously purged it from the service last year.
Presumably Payne would’ve made a cartoon based on whatever movie won Best Picture, so I’m going to take a stab at the other nominees:
All Quiet on the Biden Front: Biden napping while a tank labeled Inflation crushes taxpayers
Top Gun Malarkey: Biden about to crash a fighter jet labeled The Economy into a mountain
EPAtar: The Regulation of Water: Na’vi versions of Biden and AOC standing on a beach, talking about the need to protect the environment with burdensome regulation, unaware that a massive tidal wave labeled Red Wave is about to wipe them out
The Failmans: Biden sitting on a couch saying “Great movie, son!” as Hunter shows him a pornographic home video
The Banshees of Bidensherin: Biden looking distraught as he cradles a dead donkey labeled Democrat Party in his arms
Wokeness Talking: Biden dressed as a Mennonite woman saying things like “there are more than 2 genders”
DisasTár: Biden conducting an orchestra with the various instruments labeled Debt, Crime, Critical Race Theory, Wokeness, etc.
Triangulation of Badness: People on a cruise ship vomiting after seeing a Biden 2024 poster
Evilness: Biden dressed as Elvis during his comeback special saying he’s bringing back inflation
Mallard Fillmore voluntarily giving a generous handout to someone less fortunate??? Has the world gone topsy-turvy?!?
