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Dennis the Menace, 9/6/17

Over the years, the overarching ’50s aesthetic and cultural milieu in Dennis the Menace has gone from “it was actually created in the ’50s so it was contemporary at the time” to “creative staff is aging out of awareness of contemporary culture, or maybe is trying to maintain a consistent tone” to “active indulgence of nostalgia, Mad Men style.” Even so, I find today’s panel particularly baffling. If this were actually published in, say, 1967, I’d describe it as “someone trying to draw a hippie who’s heard of them but never actually seen one and who is physically incapable of visualizing a man leaving the house without wearing a suit jacket,” but since this was in fact produced in the year 2017, I have to imagine that it’s … trying get inside the head of such a person from 50 years ago, who’s heard of hippies but etc.? Anyway, assuming we are in the early-to-late-mid ’60s window, the extremely mildly shaggy grooming plus earth-tone suit over sweater and dress shirt says “junior faculty at local liberal arts college” but the sandals say “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, returned to judge the living and the dead from His position as a junior faculty member at the local liberal arts college.” “My Father taught me many things, but the need to conform to the transitory grooming codes of this world was not among them,” the Son of Man thinks to Himself.

Mark Trail, 9/6/17

Speaking of Jesus, Mark seems to think that he’ll be safer from the coming twister underneath a house of worship, while our nefarious criminals have only one thing on their mind: getting as drunk as possible on whatever leftover booze has been aging deliciously over at the saloon in the decades since this entire town was abandoned. Mark’s going to feel pretty pious down there in the church basement, right until he realizes it’s part of the underground tunnel system where the Samson the biblically named but still bloodthirsty bear lives.

Beetle Bailey, 9/6/17

This strip has done plenty of strips about General Halftrack’s incipient dementia, but I think this is the first time we’ve actually seen one of the other characters cruelly laughing at his doddering panic.

Mary Worth, 9/6/17

It has come to my attention that some of you think that maybe this whole “Dr. Ned is still married” thing is a big comical sitcom-style misunderstanding, and that Jared overheard him talking to his daughter or something. It’s possible, I guess, but as contrary evidence let me point out that for their big dates Dr. Ned has taken Dawn to French restaurants called “The Love Dog” and “The Dishonest Snail.” This strip generally isn’t subtle, guys.

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Spider-Man, 9/8/17

Newspaper Spider-Man is already famous for having whole narrative arcs play out without the title character actually doing anything, but today’s strip is even better, providing us with an little drama that takes place entirely within the context of the villain’s monologue, with our protagonist and the other characters just kind of dumbly staring at him.

I have a lot of questions about the Official Fountain Of Youth Chalice. Like: if it’s made of pewter, as it appears today, or gold, as it appeared last week, how did it shatter so easily? If it’s as important as all that, shouldn’t Tyrannus have several spares? Will some Morlock artisan need to use the only remaining chalice to craft a new backup? Wouldn’t it be easy enough just to use the chalice to measure the actual recommended dosage of Fountain Of Youth Water so that we would know how many milliliters are necessary and dispense with the need for a chalice altogether?

Dick Tracy, 9/8/17

Undercover cop Lee Ebony, currently working deep within in the Neo-Chicago criminal underworld as “T-Bolt,” is taking care to report back to police headquarters using an encoded message in case her phone is tapped, as the footnote in the first panel helpfully indicates. Unfortunately, Sam Catchem seems to be under the impression that if her phone is tapped it’ll only record her end of the call, so he’s just answering using people’s actual names. Admittedly it gets confusing that the main bad guy’s name is actually “Mr. Bribery,” so it’s unclear if he’s talking about him or just the abstract concept of bribery, but either way this is bound to raise suspicions.

Mary Worth, 9/7/17

“…to my work! Ha ha, yes, as a handsome, well-paid doctor I’m very committed to my career. [suddenly speaking much faster and more quietly]also i’m still married to my wife and we’re not in an open relationship or anything, she has no idea i fuck my young employees on the regular[normal speaking style] So, you definitely have the apartment to yourself tonight, right?”

Pluggers, 9/7/17

Ahh yes, a man-bear’s eyes bugging out in panic as he tries to cram an overstuffed sandwich into his mouth before too much food falls into the sink, forcing him to scoop up the soggy scraps with his hands for the second round of feeding. A classic indeed!

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Funky Winkerbean, 9/9/17

Welp, there he is: Crankshaft, definitively confirmed as alive in the Funky era! Ha … ha? His beloved red baseball cap has apparently long been stripped away, to reveal a constellation of liver spots and a few scraggly hairs. At least he still seems to be seethingly angry! Anyway, Mindy is trying to get through to his foggy mind in the only language he understands: phrases that aren’t really cliches or even malapropisms but kind of sound like they might be.

Mary Worth, 9/9/17

“Marriage is curious thing. I went into it a few years ago thinking that was it for me. Since I we met, I realized there was something more I wanted: more than one woman having sex with me, at the same time! Or, you know, two or more women who I’m having a sexual relationship with simultaneously. We have to work our way up to the same time part, ha ha! Anyway, your dad: still on that work trip, or…?”

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Mary Worth, 9/10/17

There’s a whole list of reasons why I’m super monogamous, and somewhere on the list is that the idea of two-timing just seems so stressful. Like, you have this whole elaborate web of lies that you have to keep up, and if just one of those lies is discovered, you have to quickly pivot to try to keep the other ones in place. So, yeah, I can’t say for sure that, if the college-aged girl I was dating and who I had previously and falsely assured that I was divorced discovered that I was not divorced, I wouldn’t blurt out “But if I told you I was still married, I knew you’d never sleep with me!” But that doesn’t stop me from finding it pretty funny that Dr. Ned did.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/10/17

I guess if you’ve been just making nonsensical wordplay in lieu of conversation for most of your late-middle and old age, once your mind finally does let go completely, your family won’t even notice! It’s really a blessing, except for you.

Mark Trail, 9/10/17

OH GOOD LET’S JUST GIVE A BIG “THANK YOU” TO THE MYSTERIOUS PETROLEUM-EATING MICROBES LIVING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

LET’S JUST ASSUME THAT THIS “NEW” TYPE OF “NATURALLY OCCURRING” LIFE FORM IS OUR “ALLY” AND WILL REMAIN SO INDEFINITELY

LET’S LOOK AT CUTE PICTURES OF SEA LIFE AND NOT VISUALIZE HUGE MICROBIAL MATS, DREDGED FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE GULF BY MONSTROUS HURRICANES AND CRAWLING ONTO LAND, CONSUMING THE OIL AND PLASTIC UPON WHICH WE’VE BUILT OUR CIVILIZATION

EVERYTHING’S GONNA BE JUST FINE

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Hi and Lois, 9/12/17

The first thought I had reading this strip is that a bunch of cookies melted into one big cookie in the microwave sounds amazing. Then I realized the great thing about being an adult: you can do this whenever you want, not because you’re engaged in some child-lawyering with an authority figure, but because it sounds amazing.

Gil Thorp, 9/12/17

Oh, say, what’s going in panel three here? Not much, just Gil and Kaz checking out the spreadsheet where they’re keeping the baseline information on their football players’ cognitive functioning, so they can figure out at the end of the season who amongst them had their brains turned to goo by repeated blows to the head. Wowing the guys down at the Elks Club with your fidget spinner tricks doesn’t sound like such a bad deal now, does it Rick?

Mary Worth, 9/12/17

“I’m a good listener! For instance, I can easily tell from your ellipses and strange emphasis that this ‘friend’ is really you, and you’ve managed to get yourself into a hilariously terrible personal situation, again. What I’m saying, dear, is: proceed.”

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Mary Worth, 9/14/17

“Principles, Dawn! Principles! What are we without them? Just a seething mass of lust, abandoning society’s rules and our own moral compass whenever we see a handsome slab of man-meat who presses our buttons? Like, maybe you go to New York and meet a handsome Broadway legend who’s super into you and you entertain the thought for a while but eventually you go home to your drippy boyfriend who you’re never, ever going to marry. Because of principles, OK? You tell your friend that, Dawn. You tell your friend that.”

Beetle Bailey, 9/14/17

I’m not usually one to judge other people’s recreational substance use, but I don’t think the fact that Sarge is huffing paint first thing in the morning is a great sign about how his life is going.

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Mary Worth, 9/25/17

Hi everybody, I’m back! Huge thanks to all who contributed to the fundraiser, and huge thanks to Uncle Lumpy for being a hilarious guest blogger as always! (I’m still giggling at “But his contract done restricted his wanderings to the premium content offerings from the Tribune Content Agency, LLC.”)

I’m glad to be back, though, and not least because I got here just in time for Dawn to hit her emotional nadir. We all know that Dawn’s true purpose in the great tapestry of life in Mary Worth’s universe is to be as demonstrably miserable as possible. Whether she’s mope-masturbating to Game of Thrones, or staring forlornly at one of the Renaissance’s most famous dicks while thinking about her ex-boyfriend, or, as in this case, stumbling disheveled out of her apartment after what I assume is a 24-hour long mismatched-sweatsuit-clad crying jag to grab a fistful of carrot muffins and then retreat to the nest of blankets she’s made for herself in the middle of the bathroom floor, Dawn is at her best when she’s at her most pathetic.

Crankshaft, 9/25/17

Oh, man, looks like Crankshaft is in for a tough decision that he’s going to have weigh against his moral code: what will allow him to be more of a dick to more people, siding with labor or management?

Pluggers, 9/25/17

Pluggers know that the opiate of today’s masses flows through electrical wires and broadband pipes, and they’re doing their part to help keep the spigot at full blast!

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Mary Worth, 10/2/17

Hey, everybody! Remember when Wilbur left town for a year to go ask intrusive questions to disaster victims, for money, and Iris took it badly and told him they should “consider [them]selves single” while he was away and then she decided to “try new things” with a guy her son’s age, all the while loudly proclaiming to everyone within earshot that she and Wilbur were “on a break,” and yet she couldn’t stop thinking about Wilbur so she dumped Zak and they had a tearful goodbye and then like five minutes later she spotted Zak with some new age-appropriate woman so she sent Wilbur a large-font “u up?” email? Welllp, looks like Wilbur took her claims that they were on a break to heart and has a hot Colombian lover, possibly someone whose mountainside home was destroyed in a mudslide or something, leaving her financially and emotionally bereft and receptive to his doughy charms! Words cannot describe how much I’m looking forward to the next several weeks of total emotional chaos, which I certainly hope involve Iris and a similarly devastated Dawn consoling each other by going down to the Santa Royale boardwalk and getting increasingly drunk and sexually belligerent.

Marvin, 10/2/17

If you need any more proof about the strangeness of comic-strip timescales, imagine if you were a parent of a baby in a universe where the main joke for literally 35 years was about how much he likes to aggressively shit himself, and then you abruptly decide “Yeah, I can teach him to poop in a toilet in, what, a day? How hard can it be?” Anyway, remember how I said that words cannot describe how much I’m looking forward to this week’s Mary Worth,? Well, with Marvin it’s, like, the opposite of that.

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/3/17

Oh, say, what’s going on with Les and his trilogy of graphic novels about his dead wife? Well, it seems he’s descended into cultish madness, seeing himself as the Prophet of some mysterious God (cancer?) and determined to lead his reader-flock to the land that God has promised them (death?). Jokes on everyone else, though, because we all know that Moses never made it to the promised land! Les will just be sitting by the River Jordan (the entrance to the oncology department?) watching everyone else pass through, and presumably writing maudlin comic books about them.

Family Circus, 10/3/17

There’s a lot of things to unpack here, but let’s just start with the fact that PJ is literally a baby and can hardly be said to have any “habits” to break. The more troubling truth is that the Keane Kompound has descended in anarchy and a neglected PJ is lashing violently out at everyone, even the religious leaders who have come to try to broker peace — and yet, due to a congenital family condition, Billy can only report this terrible state of affairs via cute wordplay.

Spider-Man, 10/3/17

“Old friend — get it? You’re thousands of years old and you’re going to crumble to dust soon! Ha ha! The friend part isn’t true, I actually don’t like you very much.”

Mary Worth, 10/3/17

Don’t listen to her Wilbur, give us every hot Latin detail, especially the sexual ones

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Pluggers, 10/7/17

My first thought on reading this was basically “An app? For yard sales? What does this even mean?” I thought it was a variation on “pluggers don’t need GPS” or something like that. But then I did a little research (i.e., 30 seconds of Googling) and guess what? There are tons of yard sale apps out there, which show you all the sales in your area so you don’t have to drive around looking for signs taped to utility poles like a chump. And really, why wouldn’t you use them? What the hell is wrong with pluggers that they don’t? Do they not like being able to easily find the things they’re looking for? What I’m trying to say is, I didn’t go into today’s Pluggers expecting to emerge with my feelings of smug superiority over its downwardly mobile beast-people characters reaffirmed, but I’m not complaining that that’s how it all worked out!

Mary Worth, 10/7/17

“Hey, ma, have you considered Vicodin? Sure, it’ll numb you physically — but what you may not realize is that it’ll numb you emotionally as well!”

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Hi and Lois, 10/9/17

Fall is here, everybody, and you know what that means: comics doing jokes about leaves changing color for the fall, and those jokes being totally ignored by the syndicate colorists, who just dump a green fill into the leaves as usual, making the strip completely incoherent! Today’s Hi and Lois is even worse in that clearly somebody realized that at least some of the leaves needed to be orange, and so colored the ones falling but left the ones still on the branches a uniform green. Because leaves stay a bright green color until they’re ready to fall off a tree and then immediately turn orange when they detach, right? This reaffirms my belief that the coloring staff all work in some tropical nation with extremely low labor costs and no deciduous trees, or maybe in dank underground prison.

Crankshaft, 10/9/17

Crankshaft has basically the same problem here, except that it has that extra “Crankshaft twist,” i.e., the strip’s title character literally raging against God for His manifest failures.

Sally Forth, 10/9/17

Sally Forth at least got the memo: each leaf should be its own individual color! Unfortunately, it seems they’re working on the assumption that each leaf should be a unique color, which means the colorists quickly ran out of earth tones and had to move onto pastels. Seriously, look at those pink and blue leaves Ted is kneeling amongst. Are those … leaf-shaped marshmallows?

Funky Winkerbean, 10/9/17

In non-leaf news, we can tell that, after a decade, Les is finally moving on from his dead wife Lisa because he’s dumped the labor of organizing her memorial walk onto the local Rotary Club. Sorry, Rotary Club, dead Lisa’s ghost is going to haunt you now! I don’t make the rules!

Mary Worth, 10/9/17

You know where it’s not fall? Beautiful, tropical Colombia, where Wilbur’s hot new Colombian girlfriend is going to introduce him to the wonders of salsa! She’s already introduced him to the wonders of having a girlfriend who wears skin-tight leopard-print pants.

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Judge Parker, 10/12/17

Let’s check in to see what’s up in Judge Parker, and … oh, whoops, everyone’s miserable. All their wives are in prison, or just straight up leaving them because they were a big secret-keeper about secret grandchildren and such. How strange and awful it must be for these characters, so coddled under the Woody Wilson regime, handed checks and approbation at every turn, to endure the suffering being dished out by their new Dark Lord and Master, Ces Marciuliano, which will presumably continue until the cosmic scales of karma are realigned! Look at Judge Parker Senior frowning! Did he even know what a frown was, before? Did his cheek-flesh crack as it entered a configuration entirely new to it?

Gil Thorp, 10/12/17

OK, fine, the Gil Thorp creative team really can name a specific Ed Sheeran song. Anyway, why is Rick Soto so grimly determined to resist his destiny as a teen musical sensation? Is it because of his heavy investment in violent American-style masculinity? Does he think that bashing his brain into putty makes him more of a man than being a crooner does, despite the clear evidence that belting out tunes gets all the young ladies hot and bothered?

Mary Worth, 10/12/17

I’ve been writing this blog for more than 13 years now. Some of you have been with me almost that whole time; but some of you have only recently stumbled upon this site, and you may still be wondering “what’s this thing all about, man?” Well, let me tell you: if the sight of an exasperated Colombian shouting “Señor Wilbur, you have to move too!” at Wilbur as he stands absolutely still while leaning on his prancing, jiggling girlfriend floods your brain with the kind of dopamine rush most people associate with the deepest kind of love, or maybe cocaine, then you and I are on the same wavelength, my friend.

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Mary Worth, 10/15/17

Today’s Mary Worth is mostly a hilarious rehash of a hilarious week for the Sunday crowd, but there is one new bit of information: in the first panel in the third row, Wilbur reveals that he’s so anxious and anhedonic that he needs to be intoxicated just to experience the basic levels of enjoyment that most humans normally feel when listening to music. See, we’ve all been marveling at the improbable pairing of Wilbur and Fabiana, but unlike all of you shallow people, she’s managed to look past his dweebish exterior to really understand and appreciate his thoroughly unappealing personality.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/15/17

Not so fast, kid: the real monster here is the masses’ ignorance of the finer points of 1950s horror comics artistry, a shameful deficit in our education system that allows online forgers to flourish. Really makes you think, doesn’t it?

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/16/17

Ah, it’s Monday, and what new gloom is settling on the Funkyverse? Well, somebody in a generic office building has been working to track down Darrin Fairgood, somebody with a flat-top haircut and dour demeanor that implies law enforcement of some sort. Or maybe this is tied into the plotline about Darrin’s stalker-y bio-dad that never seemed to come to anything? Anyway, I love that these guys are acting like they just cracked a major cold case by looking up a guy’s IMDB page, as I’m sure it presages hilarity ahead!

Mary Worth, 10/16/17

The problem: Wilbur so hates and fears his own body that he’s unable to even dance properly. The solution: radical exposure therapy, implemented by taking him to the beach, putting him in a speedo, and showing him that nothing bad will happen as he and his beloved frolic together in the ocean for all the world to see. And it’s working! Look at the grin! Feel that joy! His glasses are about to get knocked off his face by the next big wave, but even that won’t be able to kill his mood!

Meanwhile, back in Santa Royale, Mary is sitting in the dark, to make sure she doesn’t accidentally catch a glimpse of her foul, sinful flesh.

Marvin, 10/16/17

Hey, just a reminder that Marvin’s house is wholly permeated by the smell of feces, to the extent that the family dog feels morally superior because he goes out in the yard to take a dump!

Dennis the Menace, 10/16/17

A good way to make us all feel really menaced is to remind us that we’re three or so generations into a long-running experiment to see what happens in a society where most people start getting antsy any time they’re not looking at a screen of some sort, and that experiment is not going well.

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Gil Thorp, 10/23/17

THE GIL THORP FOOTBALL SEASON STORY SO FAR: The football team is not great, and quarterback “can do some things well,” so Gil’s gonna resort to some classic Milford trickeration, like “the veer,” which I assume is some dumb weirdo formation from the leather helmet era like the wing-T, and which they’ll practice for weeks only to see it work for exactly three plays until their opponents figure out how to stop it, and also it’ll result in the whole offensive line getting concussed, somehow. Anyhoo, I’m a little in love with panel two here, in which Gil attempts to wow his mediocre quarterback with an expansive gesture in the direction of a 2009-vintage netbook where he’s managed to figure out how to make the file folders on his desktop different colors.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/23/17

Oh, right, that’s what happened to Buck’s abusive ex: she went to jail! Briefly, and none of the safeguards that were supposedly put in place actually worked. This continues to be a depressingly accurate depiction of how domestic abusers operate.

Mary Worth, 10/23/17

I think it’s a fantastic touch that Iris imagines Wilbur’s girlfriend as being the same height as him, and with greying hair. Like she’s hung up on on him and even she can’t get her head around this.

Crankshaft, 10/23/17

OH YEAH IT’S FALL AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS: CRANKSHAFT IS MAKING JOKES ABOUT PUMPKIN SPICE COFFEE! Anyway, anything that makes Ed Crankshaft so furious can’t possibly be bad, so it’s official: pumpkin spice is extremely good now.