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Blondie, 8/12/15

The structure of the joke in this strip is straightforward enough: Dagwood feels good about himself, a state of affairs that will soon be undone by his abusive rage-monster of a boss. But something about the way that everyone around him keeps shouting “Dag swag!” at him seems profoundly off. Are we to view the entire strip as a dream sequence, in which Dagwood’s exaggerated sense of importance and centrality will soon be inverted into persecution at the hands of a cruel father figure? Or is this catchphrase intended to establish the name of a line of Blondie-branded menswear, in a second and hopefully less disastrous attempt to cash in on the strip’s intellectual property?

Pluggers, 8/12/15

You’re a plugger if you’re a hideous man-beast who, despite walking upright and wearing clothes and owning property, still has the unshakable urge to establish dominance within your kin-group by aggressively urinating in your offspring’s newly established territory.

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Apartment 3-G, 7/30/15

I’ve said nothing but mean things about Apartment 3-G for months now, so I’ll offer some tentative, half-assed praise today: I think Lu Ann and Tommie’s outfits are bizarrely charming? I mean, the glory days of their dumb makeover is long in the past and we’re going to be stuck with “cardigans or maybe suit jackets over turtlenecks” for the foreseeable future, but I like the colors! The bright, bold colors! It’s like a cult uniform, but with pizzazz, you know?

Blondie, 7/30/15

Yes, maybe not everyone is that interested in seeing a man eat the same meal over and over again. It may seem extreme that anyone would invent time-travel and risk a temporal paradox inside his own digestive system to do this, but consider the alternatives.

Mary Worth, 7/30/15

Ian seems rather desperate to convince his widowed boss to move into Charterstone for reasons we can only guess at, and will apparently stop at nothing to make this happen. Will a three-way with Toby seal the deal? He’s got a solid couple hours to talk her into it!

Judge Parker, 7/30/15

Now, probably you’re thinking, “Oh, Sam and Abbey bought this RV for a song, probably they’re about to make yet more undeserved and unneeded cash on the deal!” But the truth is they’ve already profited handily from securitizing their interest in the vehicle and selling RV-backed tranches to overseas investors. Honestly it’s going to be something of a pain in the ass to wind all those deals up when they unload the actual physical asset.

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Mary Worth, 7/27/15

Welp, the good news is Adam and Terry are finally out of the water, but the bad news is that’s all the Pool Party we get this time around. However, the great news is it looks we’re starting Ian-centric story arc, and those are the best.

“University Directors” are usually directors of something, like athletics or media services. We don’t know what Hilton Berkes directs, but judging from how hard Ian is sucking up to him it must be pretty important. Maybe UCSR got tired of all the Ian-related accidents, lawsuits, and media embarrassments and appointed a full-time Director of Professor Ian Cameron to shadow him day and night and tell him what to do. That explains Ian’s enthusiasm — he’s hoping the guy will give him real-time sex guidance during his next squalid, doomed attempt to make love to his wife.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/27/15

OMG you guys it’s beloved ancillary Rex Morgan character Heather! Heather used to be Sarah’s nanny, until she married captain of industry Milton Avery way the heck back in 2004. Since then, Heather has overcome every obstacle put in her path, while Milton has strangely declined in both mind and body. It’s pretty clear she’s been poisoning him to take over his empire, and she’s going to keep at it ’til it stops being fun.

Apartment 3-G, 7/27/15

Say, you know who else is making a new beginning? Lu Ann! What, did you think “Margo,” how can that be, do you see Margo anywhere around?

Anyway, Lu Ann wants to make a new start, so obviously the first step is to give somebody her share of the apartment, but the Professor somehow won’t let her do it. Now, the three women somehow collectively own their building. So I don’t why Papagoras has any say in the matter, unless he directs her life like he’s Hilton Berkes or something, or all Svengali-like got her hooked on drugs. Which he totes could do, he’s done it before.

Blondie, 7/27/15

Hey, you know those lazy comic strips that end with one character telling another one how funny their joke was? Well, this is the passive-aggressive inverse of that, and it’s no better.

— Uncle Lumpy