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Mary Worth, 6/18/14

Oh, hey, here’s a real thing that’s happening in Mary Worth: neglected little Olive is, we are told in the words of the omniscient narration box, literally receiving a revelation from a shining angel of the Lord. I mean, sure, we could’ve dismissed the pagan vision of flower fairies as just being a product of an overactive imagination, but this seems pretty straightforward: Olive is the instrument of God on Earth, come to deliver us His message. The main drama of this storyline will thus be Mary’s seething resentment over not being the Chosen One. One assumes that she will eventually take on the role of St. Paul to Olive’s Jesus, doing the work to found an organization and massaging the original message to her liking once the Prophet has been conveniently taken out of the picture.

Beetle Bailey, 6/18/14

On first reading this thoroughly baffling strip, I guessed that “Queen of Hurleyburg” was some kind of archaic idiomatic phrase describing a stuck-up person, like “Queen of Sheba,” that would be familiar to the 70-and-up crowd that makes up Beetle Bailey’s core readership. But “Queen of Hurleyburg” resulted in zero Google hits; instead, it seems (according to this four-year-old Usenet discussion thread) that Hurleyburg is the town that is immediately outside the gates of Camp Swampy, and, though I would have thought it was under the jurisdiction of the United States, it has apparently set itself up as an independent monarchy. General Halftrack is now on foreign soil, and without a status of forces agreement in place between the U.S. and Hurleyburg, he may find himself quickly tried and summarily executed for lèse-majesté.

Apartment 3-G, 6/18/14

Because I read the comics so you don’t have to, I went back and checked: we haven’t seen Tommie since June 6, haven’t seen Margo since May 10, and haven’t seen Lu Ann since April 29. Will any of the inhabitants of the titular Apartment 3-G ever appear again? Will they eventually fade into the strip’s history, making occasional appearances like Barney Google in the strip that still bears his name, while the main drama focuses entirely on Carol, and her love for absent Jack, and her sidekick Freddy who is a … possum? Let’s say possum.

B.C., 6/18/14

Unlike Mary Worth, B.C. does not see employee-employer relationships as mutually beneficial.

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Pluggers, 6/13/14

Boy, pluggers sure are getting in touch with their own inevitable and rapidly approaching death, aren’t they? I certainly hope that the first draft of this panel featured our dog-man hero holding up the suit in question and giving it a good, long stare; maybe there was a thought balloon in which he visualized this last good suit on his embalmed corpse, while well-wishers stood around, not looking at him, telling each other in hushed tones that it was better this way, that he was done suffering and in a better place. This panel was of course sent back to Pluggers HQ by the syndicate with “WAY TOO GRIM DUDE” scrawled across it, but I like to imagine it’s still hanging up over the drafting board, as a reminder.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/13/14

Oh hey Wally and Rachel got married this week, everybody! As you can see, the God of the Funkyverse cannot allow any happy occasion to emerge unscathed, so their outdoor wedding has been disrupted by a sudden freak thunderstorm. They tried their best to finish the ceremony, but as panel two reveals, their friends and loved ones gave up on the event a while ago.

Beetle Bailey, 6/13/14

Beetle’s primary and defining characteristics are that he’s extremely lazy and does a half-assed job at everything, so I refuse to believe that whatever desultory, fumbling, fully-clothed sex act just happened in that parked jeep merited any kind of souvenir.

Edge City, 6/13/14

There are plenty of off-putting running gags in Edge City, but obsessive neurotic Abby Ardin’s occasional attempts to get her husband interested in BDSM are among the off-puttingest.

Wizard of Id, 6/13/14

At last, it’s the Wizard of Id–B.C. crossover strip you’ve been waiting for! It’s a golf joke about getting hit in the nuts.

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Beetle Bailey, 6/7/14

Oh, look, it’s more fun on The Halftracks Hate Each Other Saturday! The joke here, I think, is that while the General might view his zany “KISS THE CHEF” apron as a marker of his laff-a-minute attitude towards life (and it did genuinely take me a minute to parse the idea that “KISS THE CHEF” is supposed to be “funny,” rather than just some kind of weird long-standing cliche), it only serves to remind his wife of his notorious roving eye and lack of affection for her. If that’s the joke, it would have worked better if the Halftracks had been hosting a cookout party of some sort and there were lots of party guests present, pretty ladies among them; we’ve never seen any such thing happen, presumably because the General’s entire social life consists of playing golf with his sycophantic mid-level officers, and his wife seems to have no friends to speak of. In the context of what we actually see here — which is to say, the General is grilling two hamburgers, because he and his wife are the only ones eating and are the only ones there — a more reasonable guess at the punchline would be that Mrs. Halftrack is repulsed by the idea of physical contact with her husband and rebelling against suggestions that she initiate it, though honestly that seems a little dark for this strip.

Dick Tracy, 6/7/14

So this slo-mo intermittent Dick Tracy-Little Orphan Annie crossover is still happening, I guess! Today, Daddy Warbucks is brazenly offering to straight-up bribe whatever city Dick patrols (Neo-Chicago?) so that the police department will assign its best officer to his particular case. He’s … supposed to be a good guy, I think?

Apartment 3-G, 6/7/14

At last, the setup promised by this strip has been realized! Anyway, if a deer and a horse can be friends, if by “be friends” you mean “be in proximity to each other for a few minutes while the deer is literally being held in place,” then sure, there is hope for us all, if by “there’s hope for us all” you mean “this alleged deer-horse relationship tells us nothing about the human condition or our potential for happiness or intimacy with our fellow beings.”

Dennis the Menace, 6/7/14

I mean, he’s making you dig your own grave, Dennis, so, probably! It’s not like you’ve got a lot more years to look forward to, if you catch my drift.