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Slylock Fox, 6/16/21

A human can outrun all of these animals … over a short distance, yes. But what if the animals started thinking in the long term? What if they created their own society, and laws, and hired a fox detective who uses steely logic and will never give up in pursuit of his targets? This particular human is right to look scared at the prospect. He doesn’t know the true face of terror, not yet.

UPDATE: Ha ha, whooops, I misread this, apologies, I have been eaten by a bear

Mary Worth, 6/16/21

Sorry I talk so much about comic book time on here, but darn it, just keeps getting more and more relevant the more years I keep doing this blog, in which I talk about comic strip characters who never grow any older! A somewhat underdiscussed corollary of this phenomenon is that since said characters stay the same age, we have to assume that all the wild adventures we’ve watched them have take place when they’re that age, which is to say within a fairly compressed period of time. Take, for instance, Dr. Drew’s brief, ill-fated romance with his coworker Liza, which took place in 2011, or his even more ill-fated relationship with Dawn, which took place four years before that. Since everyone involved was the same age then as they are now, does that mean that, in the world of the strip, they all ended about a year ago, give or take? Did Shauna pickpocket her way into Drew’s heart before or after all that? Are we meant to understand that Drew and Shauna were engaged in hot, dysfunctional action somewhere in the background while we were forced to endure the endless Saul/Eve thing? Because that would be a true betrayal of the compact between reader and comics creator, in my opinion.

Blondie, 6/16/21

Speaking of comic book time, a thing that I like to occasionally dwell on is that in the origins of this strip, Blondie was a notorious flapper and Dagwood the heir to a family fortune who was slumming in the same scenes as her in the roaring ’20s, but he gave his inheritance up when he married her and since then they’ve slowly become generic middle-class suburbanites, their histories forgotten. I always think it’d be fun to call back to that now and then, though obviously due to the passage of time that specific history now no longer makes sense, so here’s my proposal for a reboot: occasional flashbacks to Blondie and Dagwood, drug-addled New York City club kids in the late ’80s/early ’90s, you’re welcome everybody. Oh, and Dagwood was fucking Blondie’s roommate behind her back, I guess.

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Blondie, 6/15/21

I continue to respect Blondie’s decision to acknowledge the coronavirus pandemic maybe once a month or so, but even with that context Dagwood is right to be confused: we have for the most part stopped doing temperature checks, because it turns out most people early in a coronavirus infection don’t have fevers, so it’s not a particularly good screen, plus Dagwood is coming home to his wife, who he lives with, and it’s not like he’s going to suddenly become infected and infectious in the eight hours he was at work anyway. Based on the narrative turn things seem to take in the final panel, I must regretfully come to the conclusion that this is a sex thing.

Dennis the Menace, 6/15/21

Why on earth would you ostentatiously refer to wife as “boss” so loudly and repeatedly during a phone call that your baffled coworker would interrupt your conversation to remark on it? I must again conclude this is some sort of sex thing, and Henry is attempting to humiliate himself in as many ways as possible during the run-up to the act itself, for sex-thing reasons.

Mary Worth, 6/15/21

Ha ha, wait, did Drew already fill in Ashlee on all the hot gossip vis-à-vis his ex, or do they already know each other somehow, or did their instincts just immediately kick in upon sighting one another and each of them realized she had to do battle to secure her position as the alpha skank? Anyway, I’m sure this is a sex thing for some of you, but please don’t feel obliged to leave the lurid details in the comments.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/15/21

I think we’re all real familiar with how depressing the average day is at Montoni’s for the people who hang out there, so dwell for a minute on the fact that its regular denizens found it even more depressing when the were forbidden to hang out there by the health department. Also, unrelated, but I dearly hope that the final panel isn’t a sex thing for anyone, anywhere.

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Blondie, 6/3/21

THING I LIKE ABOUT TODAY’S BLONDIE: The little anthropomorphic power-lifting mascot for Power Burger, holding aloft a barbell with hamburgers for weights! It’s simultaneously pretty cute and a little menacing, which is exactly the sweet spot you want for this.

THING I DISLIKE ABOUT TODAY’S BLONDIE: The fact Dagwood and Herb are just chowing down on their power burgers right there in the front seat of the car. Are there no tables inside Power Burger where they could enjoy their meal? Are there no parks or public spaces in their bleak exurb where they could enjoy a burger outside in the nice weather? Can they not even go home to eat? Are they ashamed?

Six Chix, 6/3/21

Hmm, I’m guessing this strip is taking the reasonable position that single-use plastics are, on the whole, bad for the environment and we should try to phase out their use. But if that was the aim, maybe they shouldn’t have made the single-use plastics look like a bunch of cool party guys, whereas the ecologically virtuous containers are a bunch of sourpusses? Just putting that out there!

Mary Worth, 6/3/21

Remember, folks, there are two different kinds of absent fathers in the world: fathers who are absent because they’re off doing virtuous things, like doctoring, in which case you’ll turn out fine, more or less, and fathers who are absent because they’re criminals, in which case you too will grow up to be a criminal. Sorry, criminality runs in your blood, I don’t make the rules!

What I do make, however, is requests to turn your attention to faithful reader Wander’s beloved Mary Worth and Me blog, where he and his wife have recreated Ashlee’s stunning photo shoot. If you’d like to be one of the “cool kids,” I request you do the same and send me the pics!