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Mary Worth, 2/9/25

I have not really been talking about this Mary Worth plotline much, because it turns out that seeing a big beefy asshole act in a way that’s clearly emotionally abusive towards his girlfriend and feels like it could become physically abusive at any moment isn’t “fun” or “funny” the way most of the dysfunctional antics in this strip are. However, when the big physical confrontation takes the form of a shove to Jared’s chest so feeble that even he seems surprised by it? And Dawn reacts with the supporting attack of “accidentally” dropping a bowling ball on Dirk’s foot? And then he calls her something truly gasp-worthy, probably a “Christ-abandoned trollop”? Well, even I have to admit: that’s pretty funny, and it gets even funnier when you see that poor Aeschylus, who wrote a civilization-defining trilogy about ghastly cycles of murder and revenge and divine wrath only being resolved by Athena founding institutions of human justice, has been dragged in to provide a sheen of legitimacy to the proceedings. Don’t worry, though: none of the bajillion websites that have this quote on them tell you which play it’s from, which is a good sign that it’s made up, so Aeschylus is in fact chilling in the Greek underworld and does not need to trouble himself with Dawn’s romantic trials. (Google’s Gemini AI on separate queries tried to tell me that the line is from The Remembered, which is not an actual play, and that while it’s not from a specific play it captures the themes of the Oresteia, which is pretty funny in its own right.)

Blondie, 2/9/25

There’s a lot of questions to ask here (Who are these people and why are they attending Dagwood’s Super Bowl party in lieu of any of his actual friends or acquaintances? How committed are they to the old-time football helmet bit? Is that one guy supposed to be British?) but mostly I want to criticize the final panel. This is the comics! What you depict is only limited by your imagination! Why is this set up to imply that even within the universe of the strip, one of these guys is just visualizing a military flyover, when the artist could’ve just depicted a squadron of actual fighter jets swooping low over Dagwood’s suburban neighborhood, deafening and terrifying everyone for miles around and, if we’re lucky, dropping a BLU-109/B “bunker buster” bomb on the Bumstead residence and ending our national nightmare forever?

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Blondie, 2/8/25

Man, what’s your least favorite part of this deeply unpleasant Dagwood dream sequence? A lot of people are going to say “the glasses on the sandwich” or “the pot of gumbo on a burner that’s just kind of floating in space” or “the way you can’t quite tell if Dagwood is driven to chase the anthropomorphic sandwich by hunger or something more darkly sexual” or maybe even “why did they bother mentioning the Super Bowl but not put any football stuff in the dream sequence”, but for me, it’s the little “Po Boy” label on the sandwich. Like, come on. Do you expect us to believe that Dagwood would need to have a sandwich label in his own dream? Absolutely not. I don’t care if the idiot readers at home need to have the fact that this is “the Big Easy”‘s signature sandwich spelled out for them, I refuse to accept the way it compromises the verisimilitude of the dream sequence.

Hi and Lois, 2/8/25

Feel like this strip is the result of coming up with “the big bag store” as a darndest thing a kid would call Costco, but that’s really undermined by the fact that there are no bags in the strip. Everything is in boxes! That’s actually one of Costco’s whole things! Plus “big box store” is already a thing people say so you could have it be a double meaning? C’mon, man!

Six Chix, 2/8/25

Sorry to get all indignant there for a minute, I’ll try to chill out. Hey, were you worried that, what with all the apps today and such, Cupid wasn’t getting laid anymore? Well, good news.

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Today is the day when I pick the top comment of the week and honor it publicly, and I got your comment of the week … right here, buddy.

“I’d be pondering this cosmos too, given its nearby gas giant with a full set of rings and enormous stars capable of overwhelming the light of a full moon. Or is that a distant sun? You may be murdered by the Space Viking yet, King, but don’t sleep on the methane rain and background radiation. Hope your planet has its own magnetic field!” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

And that’s not all: I also have some fab runners-up!

“Who knows how many blunderbuss pistols could be carried in those fancy pants? The Phantom knows…” –Dennis Jimenez

“Small act of mercy for the singles bar to have a band playing so no one can hear anyone else. If you haven’t scored by 10PM it’s probably best to accept that it’s not your night and you might as well just move on with your life.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“Call it a deli because they’re serving cold cuts.” –nescio

“Why would Dagwood say ‘not exactly’ rather than ‘no’? Is he eating the candles? Was he eating them? In the latter case, did he stop because gumbo-scented wax doesn’t have the taste and texture of true gumbo, or because of mouth and throat burns?” –Lauralot

“Daisy, loyal as ever, is keeping a watch on Dagwood in the all-too-likely chance that he ODs on soup fumes and starts drowning in the bathtub.” –pugfuggly

“I thought that snowmen might not feel pain, so it is no great harm to remove a piece of their body, but if they don’t feel pain they should also not feel pleasure, and then what’s the point of ice cream?” –Ettorre

“Looks like Camp Swampy got a new … [squints at badly drawn rank insignia] captain! Farewell, previous captain … [checks Wikipedia] Sam Scabbard! Sorry you got court martialed or fragged or whatever!” –Schroduck

“That’s not a pickup line. Dustin leads with ‘I got my haircut today’ because he gets 10% off his next haircut for every new client he sends the shop’s way.” –Hibbleton

“Perhaps the butcher in the background finds Dennis’ bon mot amusing. Or maybe he’s just thinking of cutting the child into pieces and selling him by the pound. Either could explain the smile.” –Joe Blevins

“The contrast between Hagar’s resigned recognition of how terrible the joke in his strip is to Dennis and co.’s desperate denial of how much theirs sucks is palpable.” –ectojazzmage

“I’m not signed up with a dating service! I find my casual hookups on Tinder like a normal person! What are you, eighty?” –matt w

“While he wouldn’t kill anyone himself, I’m getting the feeling Dagwood wouldn’t be averse to trying cannibalism just once. He would definitely be the first to bring it up after surviving a shipwreck, plane crash, or fender bender.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“With a quick twist of her neck, she flashed her ponytail across the room with the crack of a whip. A deep bloody welt appeared on the rude man’s cheek. As he ran out, she turned with a smile toward her companion. ‘You wanna see what else it can do?’ she purred.” –Voshkod

“I reset Sarge’s alarm and painted his window black. Oh, and yeah, I murdered the bugler. Kinda buried the lede there, didn’t I?” –seismic-2

“Ah … look, mate, I appreciate the theatrics and all, but I’m just an unlucky sod who got pressed into service on a British warship and mutinied to be free … maybe you could bury me and send word back to my family of my demise? No…? Oh … I’m going to be a decoration in your cave? Well, that’s lovely. No, Nigel couldn’t possibly have the freedom in death that he never had in life. Got to be physically tied to a dreary cave with a drama queen forever. That’s rich. Stupid bloody afterlife…” –Old Man Shadow

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