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Mary Worth, 7/14/21

It looks like Ashlee is really learning some important lessons here. Physical objects, like watches, can have emotional resonance for their owners, which makes you feel bad about stealing them. But money? Money’s totally fungible. Who’s gonna care about money? Ashlee’s about to grift Drew out of a bunch of money, is my point.

Dennis the Menace, 7/14/21

I like that this panel sets up a fun little mystery (why is Dennis being driven somewhere by the Wilsons?) and then immediately solves it (they’re taking him to prison, where he’ll pay for his many crimes).

Hi and Lois, 7/14/21

“Hey, you know how our baby loves staring directly into the sun? Well, I know you said we shouldn’t just let her spend hours crawling around on the floor next to the giant picture window without any supervision, but hear me out on this better idea I just came up with.”

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Hi and Lois, 7/11/21

I don’t really care much about the lazily structured “joke” about Chip not mowing the lawn, but I am very interested in the tiny adult Hi (Himunculus?) in the top-row throwaway panel. Since Hi has been trapped in amber at the age of fortysomething since the strip launched in the Eisenhower Administration, his mental images of his youth and the past are understandably confused. “I was a child … in the ’50s, I think? And I smoked a pipe? I think I smoked a pipe in the ’50s?”

Dennis the Menace, 7/11/21

I am honestly very much here for Dennis the Menace strips where Dennis himself doesn’t even appear. Maybe the strips should be about his very absence, or maybe they should just be about what the other characters get up to without him. We haven’t had a comic strip character get Barney Googled in ages, and I think Dennis is a great candidate!

Marvin, 7/11/21

Me reading the first two panels of today’s Marvin: “Ah, a Marvin that isn’t about shitting for once!”

Me reading the the third panel of today’s Marvin: “Wait, unless…”

Me reading the first fourth panel of today’s Marvin: “Oh no”

Me reading the rest of the panels of today’s Marvin: “Oh NO”

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Bizarro, 7/2/21

Hey, guys! Do you know how amphibians reproduce? In turns out that in a lot of species, the females lay unfertilized eggs in water, and then later the males come along and ejaculate onto them. Do, uh, do you think any of the people involved in the editorial process that ended with this cartoon being published in newspapers everywhere know this? Anyway, I know I don’t usually talk about Bizarro here, but felt compelled to point out that the strip today went where Hagar the Horrible doesn’t dare; I checked my archives to see if I had ever discussed Bizarro before, and it turns that (a) sometimes Uncle Lumpy does when he fills in for me and (b) this isn’t even the first time it’s done a “so how exactly does human-mermaid sex work” panel.

Dennis the Menace, 7/2/21

Wow, remember like two weeks ago when Henry was all like, “my wife commands me and I must obey?” Well, I guess he’s still saying that, but he seems a lot less turned on by it at this point.