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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/23/11

So, when I demanded a return to the non-old-people-liver-transplant storyline in Rex Morgan, I was really more hoping for more mother-daughter squabbling and less earnest talk about modern best practices for medical record-keeping. You can tell that Rex is eating this stuff up, though, closing his eyes and letting the jargon just wash right over him. “Oooh, you used an abbreviation! Yeah, that’s the stuff.”

Dennis the Menace, 7/23/11

I’m gonna be honest with you — if I saw a black polo shirt with a red collar in real life in an adult size, I would buy and wear the crap out of it. I don’t think I’d pair it up with red pants, but I think it’s an interesting and striking color combo. I was so taken with it that it took me a moment to realize that Dennis is going for a whole new kind of unsettling menacing: attempting to put the moves on his cousin.

Hi and Lois, 7/23/11

My goodness, look at how happy Lois looks! Dot and Ditto, don’t you dare touch her — she’s obviously in some magical dreamland, one where she doesn’t have any annoying children. Even the most terrible sunburn will be a fair price for just a few more minutes there.

Apartment 3-G, 7/23/11

“Me? How could I be a mother? I don’t even know where babies come from!”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/10/11

“’Cause if there’s one thing we city slickers and country folk can agree on, it’s that we wish women wouldn’t talk! Haw haw!”

Dennis the Menace, 7/10/11

“He is peeing all over the floor, though. Why’d you tell him you were going to take him out and then not do it? Jerk!”

Hi and Lois, 7/10/11

Based all the all-too-regular shape of the font in the last two panels, I’ll guess “comics letterer at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC” is another job that’s been taken over by machines.

Panel from Beetle Bailey, 7/10/11

At last we know why General Halftrack is forever in charge of Camp Swampy, the Army’s least prestigious posting: his pacifist leanings render him unfit for front-line service.

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Baldo, 7/9/11

Does anyone remember a series of PSAs that ran during children’s programming in the late ’70s and early ’80s that tried to convince kids not to scarf down all the delicious-looking prescription medications their parents had in the medicine cabinet? They featured some vaguely Sid-and-Marty-Kroft-esque blue spherical felt puppets with little beady eyes that I guess were supposed to represent pills, and they sang a weird, warbling little tune called “We’re Not Candy,” the only lyrics to which I can remember are the end of the rhyming couplet, “fine and dandy.” They were of course horrifying and made you not want to take drugs, or even eat candy; I don’t watch a lot of kid’s TV anymore, but I’m assuming they’ve long gone off the air. At any rate, this is my roundabout way of getting to the fact that Gracie and her little friend are well on their way to becoming pill fiends.

Crankshaft, 7/9/11

I hate myself for having become even accidentally aware of the Funkyverse’s dark spiritual pantheon, but isn’t Le Chat Blue the talking cat-demon who appears to taunt Les when he’s hitting a low point of suicidal depression? I didn’t know that this monster had a band, but I’m guessing it didn’t take a lot of data mining for Amazon to suggest its brand of mope-jazz to everyone with a Westview address.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/9/11

Speaking of suicidal depression, based on Herb And Jamaal’s Nameless White Customer’s thousand-yard stare in the last panel, I’m guessing he’s confused “being haunted by one’s own mortality” with “a mature philosophy.”

Gil Thorp, 7/9/11

“As you can tell by my fashionable attire, I’m a caddie! It’s the summer job to have, if you’re a fan of staring at teenage boy ass.”

Dennis the Menace, 7/9/11

Ha ha, it’s funny because Dennis is taking joy in spending the day with his father, but all his dad cares about is his dumb golf score!