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Hi and Lois, 9/29/17

I actually find the art in today’s second Hi and Lois panel perfect and exquisite. What could be a harsher contrast to the noble, silent, straight-trunked tree that’s been growing industriously in the yard for the past 16 years? Why, the average American teen: hunched over, shirt slovenly and wrinkled, hat turned to the side for no earthly reason, a long line of slobber dribbling down from his slack-jawed face as he gulps milk right from the carton in front of the fridge. It makes one question where we went wrong as a people, and also makes one look back approximately 1.6 billion years, when the plant and animal lineages diverged, to find the answer.

Blondie, 9/29/17

Ha ha, it’s funny because Blondie has a demanding full-time job, and yet is also expected to perform all the traditionally feminine domestic and emotional labor required to maintain a household!

Judge Parker, 9/29/17

CHANGE DOT ORG PETITION FOR JUDGE PARKER TO FOCUS ENTIRELY ON APRIL AND HER ANTI-CIA WOMEN’S PRISON GANG FROM HERE ON IN

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Blondie, 9/18/17

Sometimes I wonder about the Bumsteads’ relationship. They have a sweet romantic backstory: Dagwood gave up his inheritance to marry flapper Blondie (née Boopadoop) for love. And they seem affectionate — kisses in and out the door, shared bed, respectful and brief arguments, even if Blondie seems to get the upper hand more often. No Lockhorns-grade emotional desert, that’s for sure. Still, I’m just not feeling the spark, y’know? Arlo and Janis, Walt and Connie, Darryl and Wanda, Henry and Alice, Frank and Nancy, Ted and Sally; hell, Gil and Mimi — you know those folks got it going on, right?

Maybe 87 years together sands off the highs and lows? Or having a pair of teenagers underfoot since oh, say, 1958 puts a lid on intimacy? Maybe living so long in the public eye encourages an excess of modesty? Not for me to judge.

Anyway, every once and a while like today a co-worker will open a window to the cauldron of longing, passion, and betrayal raging just outside Dagwood’s matrimonial bubble, and it leaves him pensive: Is he missing out on all the excitement? Could Blondie be stepping out on him like that? Did he blow a chance to bang this guy’s wife?

9 Chickweed Lane, 9/18/17

Erstwhile Catholic schoolboy Amos van Hoesen checks his list to see if there’s any sacrament, commandment, or sacred tradition he and his new bride have not yet reduced to a sexual fetish.

“Nope — we’re good, babe!”

Herb and Jamaal, 9/18/17

For this joke to work, you have to believe that Herb a) remembers his wedding year, b) can subtract, and c) hasn’t aged since the strip ran five years ago. Even so, Sarah’s estimate seems way high.

Isn’t it adorable that Herb’s coffee gets mad when he does?

Curtis, 9/18/17

Some guys find dress codes an unbearable affront to their dignity — I guess Curtis is one of those guys; I guess Greg isn’t. But jeez kid, don’t call your father a corporate stooge after all those years he put in at the DMV. He’s a government drone, and don’t you ever forget it.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Six Chix, 9/15/17

My occasionally achy body, my bifocals, and the act of subtracting 1974 from the current year all conspire to inform me that I am indisputably in my middle age. This happens to all of us, if we’re lucky; my main goal as an increasingly older person is to not be so out of touch with young people that my image of them becomes completely divorced from any plausible reality. Like, young people, ha ha! Always with the writing their own vows, and the non-monogamy, and the “Is this, like, a hypothetical?” catchphrase that they probably got from Gossip Girl or rap music! You know? Not virtuous, like we were when we were young!

Pluggers, 9/15/17

On this topic, I am reasonably certain that there’s at least one Pluggers panel from the mid-’00s that features an irritated manimal being technologically overwhelmed by having to deal with a then-state-of-the-art device that we would only now anachronistically call a “flip phone.” Time makes pluggers of us all, is what I’m saying.

Blondie, 9/15/17

As the parents of teens, one would expect Blondie and Dagwood to be in their mid-50s at the high end and perhaps as young as 40, so the idea that Dagwood finds omnipresent technology like tablets or smartphones baffling rings false. I do 100% approve of his decision, between panels two and three, to theatrically turn his pockets inside out. That’s the kind of solid commitment to shtick that really keep a marriage lively!