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Mary Worth, 9/27/21

“Bonjour, mes amis! Eet ees I, Pierre, narrating my new life with zees Weelbur character! Many Americans like to make big jokes about zee French and our military — how-you-say — misadventures in zee first half of zee 20th century! But let it not be said that we have not learned from our errors! For instance: keeping our army behind zee Maginot Line, waiting for zee Boche to attack? A foolish notion, as it turned out! That is why I am responding to zees one’s threatened aggression weeth a pre-emptive attack! Take zat, you terrible shoes! Trust me, Weelbur, once you get over your anger, you will thank me when you upgrade to something much more fashionable! And zat is how we shall eventually become friends, just like zee French and zee Boche today.”

Blondie, 9/27/21

I hate to be the guy pining for the long-lost past of comic strips. I’m not even going to demand a return to the Blondie of the 1930s, which featured delightfully detailed drawings of Blondie’s roommate being stood up at the altar by an ether-crazed Dagwood. I just want someone at this strip to go back to thinking up fun names for its off-screen characters, and knock it off with the incredibly on-the-nose ones. It’s a contract, which is about money, so I guess the person or company they’re signing the contract with is named … Moolah? We don’t need this brand of comics onomastics, Blondie, we already have Beetle Bailey!

Pluggers, 9/27/21

I am definitely assuming this plugger is using a grocery cart to push her giant purse around her own home. Not going to do any further research on this one!

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Beetle Bailey, 9/23/21

Gourmet, as I’m sure we all remember, stopped publication in 2009. Plato may subscribe to Fine Food, surely a much lesser imitation of the storied original, but he clings to the memory of a more genteel world. As his facial expression in panel two makes clear, that gets harder every day.

Blondie, 9/23/21

YOU HEAR THAT, NERDS? YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME, JUST BECAUSE YOU WERE SMART AND GOOD AT SCHOOL OR WHATEVER? WELL, YOU’RE GOING TO PRISON, YOU HEAR ME? PRISON!!!!

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Blondie, 9/18/21

A strip like Blondie exists in a sort of eternal present, its world changing almost imperceptibly slowly over time to stay vaguely contemporary, so it doesn’t really have any fixed “lore” per se. But still, I feel like we’re getting a lot of information here that has no foundation in previous strips. Alexander is a musician? Alexander has friends? The Bumsteads have a vast empty room adjacent to their living room that can be turned into an impromptu stage for Alexander and the friends he seems to have suddenly acquired? At least this all is in the service of a really solid joke, about Alexander’s band playing a tribute (???) to concert crowds everywhere (????) although not here because they’re just playing in the Bumsteads’ house, for his parents. This punchline is both conceptually airtight and very funny, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Pluggers, 9/18/21

You may be a plugger if you’re still wearing clip-on ties. May! We’re not really sure. Despite this strip being named Pluggers, we’ve kind of lost the thread on what pluggers’ whole deal is and we don’t want to say anything we can’t take back. Will this offend pluggers? Non-pluggers? Clip-on tie wearers? Clip-on tie shunners? People who used to wear clip-on ties but stopped for some reason? Please don’t get mad at us!