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Blondie, 7/18/18

Blondie is of course absurdly scrupulous about never using actual brand names in the strip. I’ll accept “Online To-Go” as Dagwood trying to come up with a generic phrase that describes the process of ordering food from various apps whose names he cannot be bothered to remember, but the real problem becomes apparent in panel two, as, faced with the prospect of having to come up with four names in short order, the strip verges from the dopey (“Cheesey Chuck’s”) to the uncanny valley of restaurant names (“Copogna’s,” “Gleerou’s” (?)).

Spider-Man, 7/18/18

The Newspaper Spider-Man strip is finally starting to explain one of its longest-standing mysteries, which is: what exactly are the parameters of its hero’s “spider sense” in this iteration of the spideyverse, and what good is it if it can’t, say, prevent its hero from bludgeoned with a pipe or a club, or just bonked on the head by falling masonry? Well, a few weeks ago we learned that Spider-Man has to be paying attention in order for spider-sense to work (which, if you were paying attention, why would you … need spider-sense in the first place?). Today nicely demonstrates that this is a particular problem for our hero because he is in fact extremely distractible. “OK, my spider-sense is tingling very powerfully, which means I have to pay very careful attention to my surroundings in order to avoid dang–OH MY GOD THAT DOOR IS SLIGHTLY AJAR THIS IS AMAZING”