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Blondie, 5/26/19

Longtime joshreads dot com trufans know that one of my obsessions about the comic strip Blondie is that Dagwood and Blondie and their teenage children live in a house that, as near we can tell, doesn’t have a shower. We see the inside of their bathroom repeatedly (some might say too often for comfort), and we’ve never seen a shower head or shower curtain. We know that Dagwood prefers baths himself, but it seems bizarre for him to impose his lifestyle choices on his family, especially considering that adding a shower head wouldn’t prevent him from bathing in his preferred manner.

Anyway, today we learn that there is a second bathroom somewhere in the Bumstead residence! Is this where non-Dagwood family members shower, like normal people? And where is this other bathroom? We know that the tub-bathroom where today’s action takes place is on the second floor. Is the tub-bathroom a master bath? Is the more typical bathroom usually the one the kids used, but Blondie has had enough and finally just wants to take a shower today, god damn it? I’ll return to this topic once I finish my elaborate digital 3D model of the Bumstead house, which will rival the diagrams of the Overlook Hotel that the Kubrick obsessives of Room 237 came up with.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/26/19

Good news, everyone! Any sense of dramatic tension that might’ve been created by this robbery has been dissipated in just four days, which has to be some kind of record. And the big resolution also reveals that nobody was ever in the slightest danger this whole time! What a relief!

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Mary Worth, 5/15/19

Oh hell yes this Mary Worth plot is going to get jazzed up by the introduction of a beloved character from the past, namely (I’m assuming) Terry Bryson! We first met Terry back in 2008, when she was brought onto the scene to explain to Toby exactly how badly she fucked up when she got her identity stolen online. Then, much more interestingly, in 2015, she got tracked down by her ex Adam, who was both her ex-crime-fighting partner and ex-lover. At first she was hesitant about renewing their relationship, but eventually they bonded over their shared love of jiu-jitsuing the shit out of ne’er-do-wells and then making out in front of them. Anyway, the point is that Mary is going to call this trained assassin out of retirement and she is going to track down Arther in his filthy hovel and eliminate him, because she is that serious about stopping cyberfraud. The doves in the first panel are an indication that the remainder of this storyline will be told in the style of famed Hong Kong director John Woo, which is to say extremely violently.

Gil Thorp, 5/15/19

Way back in 2005, earnest young feminists Hadley Baxendale and Steve Luhm fought to level the playing field between the He- and She-Mudlark teams, and it appears that the long moral arc of the universe has finally gotten itself fully bent, because I’m pretty sure the single panel of incomprehensible sports action that begins today’s Gil Thorp is the first we’ve heard of the boy’s baseball team this year, and we just as quickly turn back to the girls and their on-field winning ways and their “too cool for school” madness quickly spiraling out of control. Can you imagine how dull whatever the boys are getting up to must be for this business to be spring’s only plot?

Blondie, 5/15/19

You ever want to do a joke about how a tech thing makes some traditional scenario different for the kids today, but don’t follow through because you don’t actually know how people use the tech thing you want to joke about and don’t care to find out? Well, the popular and successful comic strip Blondie thinks you’re being a little too precious about it, my friend.

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Mary Worth, 5/12/19

Oh, man, check out that look of implacable determination on Mary’s face in the final panel. How dare someone break the heart of what’s-her-name, the lady who took Mary’s cat off her hands? “Arthur” will be reported, do you understand? He’ll be reported if Mary has to report him herself. And if the people she reports him to don’t take her seriously … well, then, she’s just going to have to ask to speak to their manager. Mary will stop at nothing.

The Phantom, 5/12/19

“They claimed to do these crimes to honor history!? A disgraceful argument, O Ghost Who Walks!”

“Ha-ha! I think they believed it, Guran. The criminal mind sets out to deceive others, but can be even more adept at deceiving itself! Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll head down to my treasure chambers, where my family has hoarded dozens of priceless historic artifacts that we’ve definitely acquired legitimately!”

Blondie, 5/12/19

It’s not clear what Blondie hates more: her family’s cooking, or foreigners.