Beetle Bailey goes meta. Normally, I am a big fan of meta comics (PBS, Bloom County), but this kind of disturbs me. This strikes me more as dark moment where an artist realizes that his life's work has been one big, lame joke. Unless this quickly turns into Sarge and Beetle (finally) admitting what's been between them all these years, I am hoping this sudden self-awareness is an aberration.
Ziggy, on the other hand, is always keeping it meta. Today's comic forces us to contemplate just what it means for a joke to go "stale" or be "out-of-date." Can we truly knew that a joke fails miserably because it is "old," if we can never know if it would have been funny in the first place? If this joke ever had a chance, what is the precise moment it would have reached been vintage? As the last book was being published? Somewhere in the middle when Rowling had reached critical mass? Early on, when the phenomenon of earning millions for childrens' books was somewhat fresh? Of course, we'll never know, but at least Ziggy is here to force us to wonder.
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