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Gil Thorp, 7/18/23

Oh, I forgot to mention earlier that after Gil’s arch-rival Luke Hernandez had an on-field meltdown that resulted in his losing his job, Gil bumped into him at a bar and offered to save him from penury by hiring him as Milford’s new wrestling coach. You’d think such of show of dominance, demonstrating the Gil does not view Luke as a threat and never has, would be the worst humiliation that would be visited upon the man, but now Gil is piloting a tiny aircraft and has somehow forced Luke to come along for the ride, leading him to barf right here in front of the readers and God and everybody, showing us that it’s going to be a long year for Coach Hernandez.

Crock, 7/18/23

I like how completely distraught this lady (does she have a name, or did the Crock brain trust just think of her as “the cute one” and leave it at that) looks in the first two panels here. Like when you hear that a guy “left the bathroom a mess again,” you know the details probably aren’t good, but she still poses a hopeful question, trying to figure out the least offensive possible scenario here. Honestly, good for her, that she still can conceive of positive outcomes in the world she lives in, which is the syndicated newspaper comic Crock.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/18/23

Wow, this strip really is going to keep milking pickleball for laughs all week, huh? Kind of like how Doc Pritchart is going to keep milking the Medicaid system until the Office of the Inspector General catches up with him.

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Mary Worth, 7/17/23

Congratulations, Greta! You may be depressed due to trauma, but you’re at least seeing a vet who recently started seeing a therapist himself due to his own trauma-based depression. Does that mean that Dr. Ed is as good as a licensed therapist? Ha ha, no, absolutely not, but he’s a lot more forgiving about his patients pooping in the middle of a session than an actual therapist would be.

Hi and Lois, 7/17/23

Congratulations, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and the Horse! Not only were you “shortlisted for the 2020 British Book Awards Non-Fiction Lifestyle Book of the Year,” but you also got a barely legible appearance in a Hi and Lois strip where Hi and Lois are mad at each other for reasons neither will really articulate and the vibes are real bad!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/17/23

Congratulations, pickleball! You’ve reached the stage where the creative team for Barney Google and Snuffy Smith thinks its readership will know what you are, so you must be an integral part of American life at this point! (Bitcoin hit this stage back in 2015.)

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Hi and Lois and The Lockhorns, 7/15/23

Call me “out of touch” all you want — my family certainly does — but golf seems like a hugely expensive and boring waste of time to me, and I have other hugely expensive wastes of time that I actually enjoy, so I will never play golf and you cannot convince me to do it. By “you” here I specifically mean newspaper comic strip creators, for whom golf usually lands somewhere between “relatable pastime” and “holy sacrament,” though these two strips today seem to admit that golf is, in fact, not as enjoyable as they usually make it out to be, and can even add to the overwhelming sense of oppressive ennui that we as middle-class inhabitants of the 21st century West cannot escape. Golf is at least giving Hi and Thirsty the opportunity to avoid their spouses, but somehow Leroy and Loretta have turned the game into yet another opportunity to spend time antagonizing one another while also getting a sunburn. Truly grim stuff!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/15/23

Now, I’m sure the first panel of this strip has raised objections among the more pedantic among you who are well aware that Snuffy’s house and the local church are not situated close together like this in established Googleverse canon. But the composition is in fact symbolic — the two structures are shown next to one another, prefiguring Snuffy and Parson Tuttle’s proximity in the next panel. The art in this strip is not and has never been literally representational; if it were, why does everyone look like [shudders in disgust] that?