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Mary Worth, 3/21/18

Good lord, I love how angry Wilbur looks in the second panel of this strip. How dare anyone write into his advice column complaining about loneliness when he, Ask Wendy himself, is the lonely one? The loneliest one? Let me ask you this, Ask Wendy advice seeker: were you grifted and betrayed by your hot Colombian lover, only to come home to discover that your ex, who you had dumped for said hot Colombian and who you assumed was eagerly waiting for you to come back to her, had instead gotten together with some hot dude who’s twenty years younger than you and also fabulously wealthy? Were you abandoned by your daughter, who’s leaving to spend months in Italy with some non-tenure-track academic who she isn’t even fucking? You’ve got a lot of nerve thinking you have problems worthy of America’s greatest part-time syndicated (?) advice columnist!

Dick Tracy, 3/21/18

It’s not luck that Dick Tracy survived his brutal dragging, doc; it just wasn’t his time. Call it fate, call it divine intervention, call it what you will: the point is that God wants a lot more violent deaths, and Dick Tracy is His instrument, carrying them out without remorse and with the full force of the state behind him.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/21/18

Naturally, Chester the Chiseler’s agenda for Darin and Mopey Pete is that he wants them to head up the new comic book company he wants to launch with his comics-collecting riches, and naturally they’re a little bit reluctant to do so, though the fact that they left the tenuous, low-paying world of print comics for big-budget superhero movie riches weirdly never comes up. I like this strip because the second and third panels illustrate the Funkyverse pessimism spiral perfectly. First, Pete points out, quite reasonably, that launching an entirely new franchise of comic books is a risky proposition, especially as the new company won’t have established beloved characters it can use to provide baseline revenue. But then Darin starts yammering about how everything is doomed to failure from the moment of creation and my god man we’re walking corpses, each and every one of us

Hi and Lois, 3/21/18

I had a whole post ready to go about how it’s weird that Hi and Lois wouldn’t even tell the twins about a gift from their grandparents, and that maybe Hi’s parents are estranged from the Flagstons and send a card every year to their grandchildren, trying to maintain that relationship, but Hi and Lois never show it to kids and have told them that they’re dead, but then I got to the second panel, where Trixie is contemplating the economic structure that the terrifying society of crows lurking on the front yard employs and I realized the family has much bigger problems.

Mark Trail, 3/21/18

I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely getting a villanous vibe from Mr. Marlin Creed from the Eden Gardens Zoo for some reason. What do you think his angle is? Do you think he’s going to try to eat that elephant? Is the “Eden Gardens Zoo” just what he calls his restaurant, where serves up delicious elephant meat to his discreet and well-heeled clientele?

Gil Thorp, 3/21/18

So the Social Justice Teens are planning on providing their own coverage of Milford basketball games that will serve as an alternative to Marty Moon’s racist on-air banter. The only flaw in the plan is that they … don’t know anything about sports? CHECKMATE LIBERALS

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Dick Tracy, 3/20/18

OK, fine, I take it back, Dick Tracy isn’t abruptly ending its Ghost Pepper plot at all. In fact, it’s drawing it out in loopy new directions! Ghost Pepper, who dislocated his shoulder in the crash, has sought out “Phishface,” who is a doctor (?) or something, and also a fish-man in classic inexplicable Dick Tracy style. He’s such a fish-man that he apparently used to have a “base” at the aquarium, which either means he really is part fish, and the character is a shameless attempt to cash in on the sexy fish fever sparked by The Shape Of Water, or he’s just really committed to the bit, I guess. The real question we need to ask: what’s the deal with Dick Tracy’s obsession with criminals lying low at facilities where animals are held captive for the public to gawk at, making particular use of the many closets and storage areas therein?

The Phantom, 3/20/18

You’d think being a high-powered UN official and consort to an immortal jungle god would leave little room for boredom in Diana’s life, but I guess if she needs to entertain herself by idly trying to work out which of her professional or family acquaintances are savage terrorist warlords, who am I to judge?

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Mary Worth, 3/15/18

Oh, well, this is nice, Wilbur and Dawn are saying a heartfelt goodbye before she leaves on a three-month trip, and … WAIT A MINUTE, COMPUTER: ENHANCE

I guess that’s a coloring mishap that’s rendered Wilbur’s flesh a weird green color, and that that’s his wrist and hand bending around Dawn’s shoulder, but it sure looks like a ghastly tentacle is writhing out of Wilbur’s sleeve and wrapping around his daughter as he finally reveals his true form. He shouldn’t be alive, but he is, because he’s one of the ageless Old Ones whose human fleshsuit is starting to slough off!

Dick Tracy, 3/15/18

Ah, it looks like Ghost Pepper isn’t dead after all, and Dick is a little too confident of his ability to kill his enemies indirectly. Fortunately, there are lots of ways a man (a ghost? a ghost-man?) can die fleeing from trigger-happy cops down a snowy mountainside!

Family Circus, 3/15/18

You know how the Keane Kompound walls are generally vast, featureless voids? Well, Mommy has finally decided to do something about it! Too bad she waited until after the endless undifferentiated emptiness drove her insane.