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Funky Winkerbean, 3/31/19

Hey, how’s it going with Funky’s mother-in-law moving in with him and Holly? Well, it’s been, what, two weeks, and already he’s hoping she’s gonna die of a pill overdose on the toilet.

Mary Worth, 3/31/19

Folks, take it from me, a guy who spends way too much time hanging out alone with, and talking to, cats: when you try to convince your cat that you’re making the right decision, you know in your heart you aren’t making the right decision.

Panels from Beetle Bailey, 3/31/19

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, it will come as no surprise to you that I’m the kind of guy who would read these throwaway panels in Sunday’s Beetle Bailey and wonder, “Say, can you stream old Lassie episodes?” Turns out you can’t! So that means I have to smugly give these panels “four pinocchios,” in the parlance of our fact-checking press. Unless … there’s a special Dogflix service that provides streaming dog-related content, and it’s only available to dogs? This is a mystery I will now dedicate my entire energy to cracking!

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Beetle Bailey, 3/29/19

Sorry, I feel like I have to call bullshit here: while Beetle Bailey is somewhat of a trickster narrative figure, like Kokopelli or Bugs Bunny, his overwhelmingly dominant characteristic is that he is extremely lazy. He can’t even maintain consciousness for the full duration of a single date, so I refuse to believe that he has the gumption or energy to either learn enough artistic skill to paint a serviceable Picasso pastiche, or that he would bother to dress up like an “artist” stereotype just to add to the laughs when General Halftrack confronted him.

Hi and Lois, 3/29/19

Chip, I know you live out in the ‘burbs and have only passing familiarity with what the hipsters are up to, so, as someone who lives in the belly of the urban beast, let me assure you that hipsters today are all about growing elaborately sculpted and maintained facial hair and getting $60 haircuts and beard trims at “retro” barbershops with extremely on-the-nose names, to give you just one example within electric-scooter-riding radius from my house. Ditto, who seems more plugged in to the zeitgeist, is right to “Huh?” at you in slack-jawed shock as he imagines you walking into some dive bar simulacrum and ordering a $17 cocktail only to have the handlebar-mustachio’d bartender laugh in your Don Johnson-esque face.

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Mary Worth, 3/12/19

Oh, hey, if you’re wondering where the Estelle/Arthur Z (or, more accurately, Estelle/team of catfishers hanging out in a Kuala Lumpur cybercafe operating the “Arthur Z” SilverDaters account) is at, it’s reached “quoting e e cummings over the phone,” and Estelle is over the moon! The main question I have is if they’ve somehow tricked her into calling into a phone number she has to pay them for, or if they’re doing this toll-free via Skype or whatever and they’re keeping their powder dry for the moment when “Arthur Z” loses his wallet and needs a five-figure sum wired to a Malaysian Western Union office, stat.

Mark Trail, 3/12/19

Meanwhile, in Mark Trail, Cherry’s dad just got a phone call letting him know his old friend died, which means we have six to fifteen weeks of a “Doc confronts his own mortality!” adventure ahead of us. Not sure how they’re going to work Mark blowing up a boat into this but I’m confident they’ll find a way.

Beetle Bailey, 3/12/19

The Wikipedia list of Beetle Bailey supporting characters is invaluable to a scholar of the Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC oeuvre such as myself, but I have problems with some of its takes on the players’ personalities. For instance, Dr. Bonkus (NO REALLY HIS NAME IS “DR. BONKUS”) is described as “Camp Swampy’s loopy staff psychiatrist, whose own sanity is questionable,” but in all the time I’ve been reading the strip he’s never been anything other than a long-suffering straight man to everyone else’s antics. I kind of enjoy the fact that today’s strip takes place in two entirely different locations; it would have been a little shticky if Rocky had pulled out his guitar and delivered this punchline in mid-session, but as it is we can imagine that he just said “Great!” and got off the couch and left without further explanation, leaving Dr. Bonkus behind to sigh heavily and contemplate, not for the first time, just how much he really helps his patients.

The Phantom, 3/12/19

You’d think that when you’ve been raised from birth to be the 21st in a lineal series of mysterious jungle superheroes, you wouldn’t make rookie secret identity mistakes along the lines of “me … uh, I mean, not me, my close personal friend, the hero, who isn’t me at all, heheheheheh [nervous laughter gradually fades out]”

Six Chix, 3/12/19

Congrats to Six Chix for taking its weird foot thing to the next level … indeed, to the highest possible level. Who wouldn’t want to worship a God with such magnificent toes? Truly we are blessed to be formed in His image, foot-wise.

Pluggers, 3/12/19

Ha ha, did you guys know that bears are carnivores and kangaroos are herbivores? I sure hope plugger diner seats are pleather or some other material that’s easy to hose the blood and viscera off of!