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Blondie, 6/3/14

Haha yes Dagwood is on an emotional roller-coaster because the idea for wearable food-based scents that he came up with during an idle sandwich-binge but never pursued has been monetized by someone else with a dumb brand name, and now with that out of the way let’s get to the real story here, which is the weird rolls of flesh (?) around Dagwood’s neck. Longtime readers know I’ve been worried about these things for some time; once, long ago, I worried that Dagwood had maybe sewed a turtleneck out of human skin. But now I think something slightly more subtle is going on here. Dagwood’s face is as smooth and youthful as it’s ever been over the course of his 80+ years in the comics pages. Could it be that only his wrinkled neck-flesh reflects his true age? I would be wholly satisfied if this were the result of either a Portrait of Dorian Gray-type curse scenario or an increasingly elaborate series of facelifts that had to shift the excess wrinkles somewhere.

Apartment 3-G, 6/3/14

Well this has definitely been the boringest ever Apartment 3-G storyline that’s been played out over the course of a conversation between two non-main characters whose motivations we can’t understand and don’t care about! So, in addition to being Jack’s love interest and an example of what Lu Ann would look like if she were put into a highly experimental fast-aging chamber, Carol is also the best friend of Jack’s dead wife! Also, Jack has a dead wife! I guess we’ve finally figured out what this plot is about: Tommie and Jack are mourning their dead partners in the same way: by not talking about it and burying their feelings under mounds of horse poop.

Hi and Lois, 6/3/14

Congratulations, Hi and Lois: after literally years of unsuccessful attempts, you have finally made me genuinely laugh. Hi’s tiny brandy snifter is a nice touch, as is the fact that Botticelli’s Birth of Venus is hanging on the wall, which Hi, in a signal of his total commitment to this passive-aggresive gag, presumably put up to replace whatever sub-middlebrow print was there before (some cursive phrase about the importance of family that you can buy framed from Target, I’m guessing).

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/3/14

True story: when I read panel one, I legitimately thought the joke was going to be based on the premise that Hootin’ Holler was one of those few regional markets where you can still buy Tab, the diet soda that’s now been almost entirely displaced by Diet Coke. But then I got to panel two and realized it was just yet another Barney Google and Snuffy Smith about how all its characters were desperately poor and I got real sad.

Pluggers, 6/3/14

“No! Your mother’s great! I love your mother! I think about having sex with your mother all the time! Come back! What am I saying wrong?“

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Mark Trail, 5/27/14

“Honey, when the bear was closing in on me, I didn’t fear for my own safety … all I could think of was you! I just filled my mind with a vision of your face, and I prayed, inwardly, with all my might, ‘O Ursicus Maximus, Lord of Bears, please call your servants away from me, and I promise that I will make a sacrifice to you out of this beautiful she-human. Spare me, O Bear God, and you will be paid back a thousand-fold in blood.’ Anyway, now I’m going outside for a little stroll, maybe down to the sacred grove that shelters the ancient Bear Altar … care to join me?”

Apartment 3-G, 5/27/14

Whoops, looks like in all the time Tommie’s been working for no pay down at the large animal cult compound, Jack neglected to mention his girlfriend! Carol refuses to address Jack with the “Doctor” honorific that his veteranarian status would seem to call for, but on the other hand she’s eager to make out with him even though he’s coated in cow afterbirth-goo, so they seem to have a good thing going on.

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Herb and Jamaal, 5/21/14

Or you could blame the way that, over the last 75 years or so and without anyone exactly intending it to happen, a set of institutions that had for centuries existed mainly as intellectual finishing schools and networking opportunities for the elite were transformed into producers of the credentials necessary for just about anyone to enter the modern economy, despite the lack of a fundamental transformation of how they work, with any number of unintended negative consequences (out-of-control student debt being at the top of the list). But, sure, use this as an opportunity to work out your frustrations about your dad, whatever.

Apartment 3-G, 5/21/14

It looks like one of Jack’s ex-thralls has wandered back onto the compound to make fun of his current victim! I also really hope Carol is kidding, though; they’ve been talking for at least five minutes, so clearly she should’ve figured out by now that Tommie’s incapable of feeling “love” or indeed any other emotion stronger than mild distress.

Slylock Fox, 5/21/14

5) Do whales engage in forbidden, perverted encounters with fish, despite the fact that cetaceans and fish are from completely different taxonomic classes with radically different reproductive cycles, and their superficial physical similarities are entirely the result of convergent evolution? Absolutely true!