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Apartment 3-G, 8/26/15

The Apartment 3-G dreamscape continues with this callback to a previous plot that almost seems to make sense in light of previous events but then not really at all when you think about it for more than 30 seconds! Lu Ann didn’t “meet Eric a few years ago”; she worked for him at his gallery, as did her drug-addled boyfriend, and was spending enough time with him to send Margo spinning into a hilarious jealous rage. She and Tommie in fact both knew Eric pretty well, so why would Tommie’s protest be that “Eric Mills died five years ago” rather than “Eric Mills looked nothing like this man standing in our apartment?” Or if he does look like Eric, why aren’t they saying “But we thought you were dead?” It’s like they’re constructing the reality of their world using logic and their vague memories of the past rather than the evidence of their senses, which, I guess, wouldn’t be the first time.

Mark Trail, 8/26/15

“That’s it! … Ken, you’ve given me an idea! We need to get our hands on a geiger counter and take it down to the sunken freighter! Fortunately, geiger counters are readily available for purchase and can even be shipped overnight!”

B.C., 8/26/15

Here’s today’s B.C.! It takes place on a nightmarish fleshscape, just underneath which seethes delicious blood.

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Gil Thorp, 7/16/15

Huh, for some reason I had thought football phenom True Standish was a senior, and had just blown into town to help Milford win the Valley Conference title trophy, aka “the Golden Cock,” before graduating to become a backup quarterback at a second-tier Big Ten school for the next three years. But it looks like we’ve got another year of his laid-back, good-natured antics to go! Today I mostly like the way True’s less-talented teammates are laughing it up in panel two. “Ha ha, you’ll be courted by important people who can advance your career, while we’ll hang out here drinking off-brand soda and watching other people jet-ski! High five!”

B.C., 7/16/15

The idea that our beloved (?) B.C. characters comprise the entirety of a tiny, isolated band of hunter-gatherers is probably the most accurate depiction of paleolithic humanity in this strip to date. Here’s hoping the accuracy continues and we get a good look at what happens when power relations in a society without organized political structures shift: fratricidal violence.

Mary Worth, 7/16/15

Oh, OK, maybe this will be the drama behind this mysteriously still ongoing Mary Worth storyline: Adam is psyched to be working with Terry, while Terry is only kind of enh about it! This strip can squeeze another three to five weeks out of that for sure.

The Lockhorns, 7/16/15

One of the main appeals of zombie apocalypse fiction — of apocalypse fiction of all types, really — is this: that though the world depicted is one suffering from terrible trauma, it’s also one where the constraints of our current lives have suddenly been swept away. In all likelihood you’d be killed in the opening hours of the plague or uprising, of course, but there’s a visceral thrill in imagining yourself in a new situation, with your boring money troubles and domestic squabbles vanished along with the restraints of traditional social morality. But the Lockhorns are so dead inside that even this mental escape is impossible for them. They know they live in the worst of all possible worlds, and that this is the only one there is.

Pluggers, 7/16/15

You’re a plugger if you’re extremely careful to respect the trademark rights of patriotic American companies like Johnson & Johnson, but the French communists who run Chanel can go fuck themselves.

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Crankshaft, 7/5/15

Sure, Ralph Meckler says he’s just an ordinary citizen fighting for the little guy’s right to drive on safer streets. But his campaign is in the pocket of the sausage restaurant industry. Do we really want our city government ignoring important environmental and zoning concerns and just rubber-stamping approvals of chain eateries that serve substandard biscuits? Mayor Kane: Leadership We Can Trust.

B.C., 7/5/15

Here is a sequence of words that has almost certainly never been constructed before but which I nevertheless believe to be meaningful and also true: these prehistoric ants appear to be Seventh-Day Adventists.

Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/5/15

OH MY GOD LOWEEZY IS GOING TO RAISE CORPSES FROM THEIR GRAVES USING FOUL BACKWOODS NECROMANTIC SORCERY