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For Better Or For Worse, 3/23/09

Generally speaking, I have chosen to ignore the “new-run” incarnation of For Better Or For Worse, partly to protest the strip’s shameless failure to fade away gracefully, and partly because it turns out that 99 percent of the fun was mocking the twists and turns of the end-game melodrama. I had intended to similarly pass over the current mostly-new storyline, in which Elly has gone off to Vancouver, leaving John alone to go whoring with his caddish co-worker at “The Swig And Swine” (BECAUSE MEN ARE DRUNK PIGS GET IT). But I was driven to briefly return from my self-imposed exile from Foobonia by panel two, in which the strip betrays its most important value: its Canadianosity. Seriously, what self-respecting Canuck would offer a toast with words that rebellious scoundrels used to separate part of His Majesty’s North American possessions from the mother country? This horny dentist’s ancestors were probably driven out of the southerly colonies by anti-royalist mobs with that very phrase on their lips! A real Canadian patriot would have instead raised a mug of Molson Golden to peace, order, and good government, and if that would have made it harder to transition to a terrible pun about trying to fuck the waitress, well, so much the better.

Apartment 3-G, 3/23/09

So the current Tommie storyline will apparently center on Dr. Kelly showing up at Apartment 3-G unannounced and putting her increasingly awkward situations. Since previous Tommie storylines included such gems as “Tommie is repeatedly insulted by her ditzy neighbor” and “Tommie tries and fails to seduce her married friend,” I say bring it on!

Children are kind of a wild card in the Apartment 3-G universe, as I can’t remember them ever appearing before, or any of the characters expressing the slightest interest in their existence. Margo’s reaction upon returning home and finding two short, unruly humans in her apartment ought to be priceless, at any rate. “Tommie, I was just trying to get them to settle down! It’s not my fault they can’t hold their liquor!”

Dick Tracy, 3/23/09

It looks like Dick Tracy, having eliminated all crime through his patented brand of Bill-of-Rights-violating mayhem, is now going to take on distasteful but wholly legal business practices. Next up: AIG executives are forced to pay back their bonuses … with their flesh.