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Hi and Lois, 8/29/23

Look, I’m just a simple city boy who’s always had his trash collected by a municipal service department, and I don’t understand the wily ways of suburbia with its advanced public-private partnerships and such. That’s why the relationship between Hi and his garbagemen has always puzzled me, as it’s often implied that he’s paying them directly in some way? I always assumed they were contracted by his HOA or something, but now that I find out that it’s actually some kind of anarcho-capitalist situation where different suppliers compete for dominance both by offering superior service for better prices and by using violence to intimidate or eliminate their competitors, I have to admit that I’m a lot more interested.

Blondie, 8/29/23

If you’ve read this blog long enough, you know that inside me are two wolves: one that gripes “Ugh, this long-running legacy comic has been beating the same joke into the ground for decades” and the other that gripes “Wait, this is out of character! Why isn’t this long-running legacy comic strip character using one of the beloved jokes he’s been doing for decades?” Anyway, today the second wolf has triumphed, and I have to say I’m disappointed that the punchline here is “Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if men liked reality TV?” rather than the reveal being that Dagwood was watching America’s Next Top Sandwich or The Real Sandwiches Of Beverly Hills or Love Is Blind And Also They Eat Sandwiches or something.

Dennis the Menace, 8/29/23

Alice shaming her son for not having any friends to play with? A rare menace reversal here.

Dick Tracy, 8/29/23

“A real piece of shit. We all wanted him dead and whoever did this to him should get a medal. Frankly I’m pretty furious the coroner called you down here. Nobody in this locker room is going to testify at trial.”

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Hi and Lois, 8/27/23

All the Walker-Browne golf strips are sad, of course, because they’re about golf when they could be about literally anything else. But this one is particularly sad, I think we can all agree. Look at the huge smile on Thirsty’s face in that last panel! There’s nothing he loves more than spending the day out on the links with his best friend, then relaxing with him together and discussing the game. Hi, meanwhile, is starting to outright panic that Thirsty simply will not go away so he can spend some time with his wife, who (unlike Thirsty) he actually likes.

Dick Tracy, 8/27/23

Look, I know that I complain a lot that Dick Tracy’s glory days of theatrical ultraviolence are sadly far behind it, so I must admit the current Minit Mystery, which apparently involves professional baseball players bludgeoning each other to death in the locker room due to poor on-field performance, is pretty ultraviolent, actually.

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Dick Tracy, 8/23/23

Hey! Remember, Sprocket Nitrate, the ancillary Dick Tracy character whose whole deal is she goes around barefoot all the time? Well, we’ve heard that some of you foot sickos are getting a little too turned on by this, so for this plotline we’re having her walk through a dirty old abandoned train tunnel, which you shouldn’t find arousing at all, but rather unpleasant and distressing! [An aide whispers some information about the sort of thing foot sickos are into in my ear] What? Oh NO

Blondie, 8/23/23

Ha ha, you guys heard about the “texting” these kids do today? You heard about these fancy new “cell phones”? Oh, you have? You say that 90 percent of Americans had cell phones 10 years ago? But if that’s true, why would a comic strip in the year of our lord 2023 be doing a joke like this? Huh, how do you explain that, smart guy?

Marvin, 8/23/23

I’m not sure if I personally have done something to offend an ancient spirit or powerful magic user, or if rather a curse attached itself my bloodline in generations past, but I have made peace with the fact that I am fated to inform you, my hapless readers, every time the newspaper comic strip Marvin does a joke where the whole thing is “Check it out! Piss and/or shit!” Anyway, here’s today’s Marvin.