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Blondie, 2/3/19

A thing that happens with sitcoms is that the characters often “heighten” over the years, becoming wackier and less moored to reality. A good example is Winston on New Girl, who began the show as one of the most grounded of the main characters and ended it as wildly, hilariously eccentric. Now keep in mind that even the most popular sitcoms rarely last more than seven or eight seasons, and compare that to legacy comic strips, which run for decades. Sometime in the 89-year history of Blondie, someone decided that Dagwood had a big appetite, and now … now look at this. Look at his Super Bowl dining plans. This is a suicide note, is what this is. Blondie is leaving because she doesn’t want to see her husband’s gruesome end; Mr. Dithers is there in a last ditch effort to save his employee by absorbing some of the damage.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 2/3/19

I don’t feel like turning this panel over, but maybe the tree-monster will have a hard time hiding because it has glowing, nightmarish red eyes??? And a huge, gaping maw, an inky black portal to who knows what terror-void? And probably it wheezes, or moans, or makes other noises one might expect from an abomination against nature? Burn it, I say. Burn it to ashes as soon as you can!

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Blondie, 1/17/19

To me, the best part of this comic, which posits that Dagwood is an animal test subject in some vast, mysterious laboratory, is that he’s failing to validate whatever experiment is being conducted. Blondie might imagine him fulfilling some higher being’s expectations for coffee’s effect on human motivation, but in real life there he is in bed, stubbornly refusing to be chemically motivated. It’s beautiful to me, though surely like all experimental subjects he’ll be disposed of soon enough.

Dick Tracy, 1/17/19

One of the people working on a Dick Tracy-derived performance that involves multiple layers of nostalgia, each resonating with a smaller and smaller audience, feels so unfulfilled by the exercise that he needs to drink himself stupid in order to carry on with it! Hopefully this is not a disturbing look behind the scenes at the strip.

Mary Worth, 1/17/19

MICHAEL [to himself]: “Oh, snap, this chick doesn’t need my help with the assignment, she must really be good at English lit. But how am I gonna get her to sleep with me then? I know, I’ll bust out some big words. Chicks who love English lit love big words!”

MICHAEL [aloud]: “Are you an English literature aficionado?”

Dustin, 1/17/19

Maybe I’m wrong about Dustin not adequately covering both sides of the Boomer-Millennial divide. Sure, the comic makes fun of today’s youths and their habit of just dozing off in the middle of the work day, but it also points out that today’s old people hate their families so much that it’s literally killing them.

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Blondie, 12/12/18

I believe that Dagwood is a true food fetishist, in the sense that he doesn’t just enjoy the act of consuming food in and of itself, but has so centered it in his personality that he’s developed various paraphilias around it. So yeah, he’s gonna want some elaborate role play with his Christmastime pizza delivery, but here’s the thing: sex workers generally charge more as their clients’ tastes get more exotic, and this scenario is no different. You want someone to come down your chimney with pizza (not a euphemism, this is literally what Dagwood wants, this is what he’s been thinking about all day, ever since he spotted the pizza delivery guy in his Santa suit last night and wrote down the number on his car), you’ve gotta pay come-down-your-chimney-with-pizza money.

Crankshaft, 12/12/18

Speaking of people who won’t be coming down your chimney, the “joke” of the current Crankshaft arc is that Crankshaft was running late and didn’t have time to change out of the costume from his mall Santa gig before arriving at his bowling night, which, fine, but … the beard? Surely he could just take off the beard? I was thinking maybe he had affixed it to his face with spirit gum but that seems like far more commitment than Crankshaft has ever put into anything that wasn’t spiting his fellow man.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/12/18

Now, I’m not an artist or a scientist but I was kind of curious about what was going on from an anatomical perspective in that stall and this is what I came up with:

So you heard it here first, kids: pencils shit standing up!

Funky Winkerbean, 12/12/18

Ahhh, I love Holly’s mom’s expression of slowly dawning disappointment! That’s the face of a woman who just minutes ago thought, incorrectly, that she was about to get laid.

Pluggers, 12/12/18

You’re a plugger if there’s absolutely no way you’ll be able to complete your list of menial tasks before you drop dead.