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Mary Worth, 6/13/19

This is a full time Wilbur/Estelle (Wilbstelle? Estbur?) fanblog now and you can just deal with it. Today I am mesmerized by the massive burger looming in the background, which I guess is an image on the window of Delicious Grill(e?) but looks like some kind of hovering alien being, whose research on Earth determined that hamburgers were plentiful and therefore an inconspicuous form to take, beaming love rays into Wilbur and Estelle’s brains and convincing them to head back to Estelle’s apartment for piano playing and sex, for whatever inscrutable reason (presumably the alien’s spacecraft is powered by the energy produced when two middle-aged people settle for one another).

Dennis the Menace, 6/13/19

I’m not even going to bother assessing Dennis’s menacing level here, and instead I’m just going to point out the truly bizarre arrangement of furniture in the Mitchells’ living room. Like, did Henry or Alice deliberately move one of the chairs so that they could sit angrily near each other like this? Or is this the permanent arrangement, acknowledging that their amity could shatter into mutual animus at any moment, but their fundamental attraction precludes either of them from just storming out of the room?

Six Chix, 6/13/19

Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that the new owner of your favorite bakery is extremely cheap — he’s skimping on the lemon bars so that it’s like eating all dough and no filling; you order them all the time and you can tell. Sure, you could call a friend on the phone to tell them about it, and that has its satisfaction. But what if you had a syndicate newspaper comic? Then you could tell thousands of people all over the country your tale of woe! Admittedly, that story wouldn’t contain a “joke” per se, but years doing a syndicated newspaper comic will have taught you that if this was once a reason to stop a comic strip from being published, it no longer is and hasn’t been for some time.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/13/19

Check out Rex’s thinkin’ face in that last panel. “Wait, you can just pay people to go away? Because I’ve got plenty of money and I don’t like people very much. This could really work out for me!”

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 6/9/19

Slylock, you fool! Count Weirdly has deliberately planted the false “sunbathing” factoid because he knows your mind will immediately latch onto it and you’ll reveal his new invention as a “fake,” lulling the Animal Kingdom into a false sense of complacency. As soon as the disappointed press leaves, he’ll start using the fully functional teleportation device for its real purpose: transporting clothed and armed soldiers from Australia, the last continent on Earth where humans still dominate. At last, H. sapiens will have its revenge!

Dennis the Menace, 6/9/19

Today’s Dennis the Menace is here to let us know, as if we couldn’t have guessed, that the Wilsons’ sex life isn’t that great.

Blondie, 6/9/19

I’m not going to engage much with this strip except to point out that a dog wedding with a cake shaped like a fire hydrant is the equivalent of a human wedding with a cake shaped like a toilet. Can you imagine a wedding cake shaped like a toilet? I can. In fact, I think I’ll be intrusively imagining it for a long time to come. Thanks for nothing, Blondie.

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Spider-Man, 4/30/19

I know I said I wasn’t going to get into Rerun Newspaper Spider-Man until it dipped a little further into the vaults than five years ago, but I guess I should grudgingly acknowledge that the particular rerun storyline they chose to launch the reruns involves Mysterio as a villain, who will also be the villain in this summer’s upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home, which means that this zombified strip is doing a significantly better job of adding the infinitesimal amount of buzz of which it’s capable into the cultural ether to boost the next entry in the most lucrative series of films in cinematic history than it did when it was still a going concern.

Anyway, not that I expect to revisit this, but the outcome of this newspaper storyline was that this Mysterio wasn’t the real Mysterio, despite the fact that as far as I’m concerned anyone who puts on this ludicrously dumb costume with its fishbowl helmet and calls themselves Mysterio deserves to be thought of as a real Mysterio, at least. I would find it profoundly amusing and satisfying if this were also the shocking twist at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, a film where presumably 75% of those seeing it will have only the vaguest of familiarity with the character. The main result would be a collective “Huh?” from most of the audience, followed by some furious rewriting of the infinite “Who Is Mysterio, The Villain Of Spider-Man: Far From Home?” explainer articles churned out by every publication from Politico to Bon Appétit as they desperately seek out that sweet, sweet Marvel Cinematic Universe SEO traffic.

Mark Trail, 4/30/19

Mark has been scowling aggressively at JJ pretty much from the moment he met him, and he’s gotten so deep into it that he seems to have forgotten his real primary non-punching role, which is to interject nature facts at vaguely appropriate times. Looks like Doc has to do his work for him! And he’s not doing a great job! Javelinas aren’t pigs, but they’re part of the suborder Suina, which means they’re more closely related to pigs than any animal that isn’t a pig. You’re lucky you’re so far out in the desert that nobody can look this up on their phone, Doc!

Dennis the Menace, 4/30/19

I’m not up on modern methods of child discipline, but usually when a kid’s in “time out” or whatever they call it these days, do his parents let his friends just wander in and talk with him? I mean, maybe the other kids’ parents want them to see him, like as a cautionary example or something.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/30/19

Hmm … Lucky Eddie wants to open a fish store because he’s … “passionate” … about … fish?

Hagar the Horrible, 7/17/18 and 8/26/17

Noooooooooooooo