Channeling Josh, the Comics Curmudgeon, here's my take on the strips today.

Blondie 26 May 2005

Dean and Dennis have, with this strip, embodied the modern American ideal. Not a workplace where a loyal (if lazy) worker gets to make ends meet, but where he slowly gets further and further behind. As Dagwood tries to explain to his boss the problems of living in an inflation economy on a 1930's wage (because really, has he EVER actually gotten a raise out of the old miser?), Dithers stares at us with the perplexity only a well-paid upper manager can muster.

Then, surely recalling his days as a strikebreaker working for his father, he bounds from his chair to poke Dagwood in the chest. "Don't come to me with that namby-pamby cost-of-living hooey," he says, "Just go into debt." And thus the tenuous symbiosis of the J.C. Dithers company is thrown in to chaos—no longer is Dagwood just trading a nap for Dithers' occasional kick in the ass—he's also earning the privilege of running up credit-card debt. Dithers makes clear who wears the light-blue polka-dotted Zubaz in this company. Notice Dagwood's face in panel three: he's really afraid Dithers is going to do something crazy, like rip the giant gold button from Dagwood's shirt.

Next week: Blondie and Dagwood refinance the house.