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Between Friends, 8/26/22

Between Friends mixes joke-a-day and soapy arcs about three middle-aged women and should therefore be called Among Friends, but that’s not important right now. Capable but paralyzingly insecure office manager Susan, passed over for promotion by manager Joan in favor of twentysomething incompetent rage-monkey Kyle, accepted an invitation to join former colleague Savreen’s startup, where the salary, benefits, perks, office environment, and culture are all incomparably better than at her old place.

But you caught that “paralyzingly insecure” part, right? Rather than face change, Susan lets herself get lured right back into the same old misery, where her manager will will give her a nominal promotion and add “disloyal” to a profile that already includes “neurotic,” “small-minded,” and “drudge.”

Sally Forth, 8/26/22

I can’t believe it’s taken five years for Jackie to come around to my suggestion that she take up money-laundering. And how you stand behind the counter at a shop like Small Wonders through a 42-phase pandemic without even considering SBA benefits fraud is completely beyond me.

Sure, Jackie, trinkets are getting more expensive—but imagination is still free!

Dick Tracy, 8/26/22

Dick Tracy‘s commitment to continuity is not so much tenuous as it is selective. “Drs. Tim Sail and Zy Ghote crashed the only remaining space coupe into Jupiter”? Nah, there’s a whole fleet of them, now equipped with big-ass Scrooch Guns. “Now that my people have left the Moon, I will serve them no more as Governor but as their Ambassador”? Nah, he appointed himself Governor again yesterday. But adorable little puffs of condensed breath to prove it’s cold there and Dick is a mammal? You bet!

Dennis the Menace, 8/26/22

“C’mon, Gina, you’re a five-year-old girl: show him how it’s done!”

Hi there! I’ll be sitting in through September 9 while Josh and his wife take a glam European adventure-vacation. Reach me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net if you experience site problems other than comment-moderation issues (I get automatic updates for those). Enjoy!

–Uncle Lumpy

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Mary Worth, 8/14/22

Behold DaWnilbur, everyone! I love the way this matches up with realistic dream logic in that Dawn was spending hours before falling asleep saying “It’s like I’m turning into my father!” but once in the dreamscape she’s totally unsuspecting and when her hair starts falling out she doesn’t immediately grasp the metaphor, but just looks at it quizzically as the Transformation gets underway. Anyway, I truly enjoy the next-to-last panel here, in which we learn that even fully Wilburized, Dawn will still have pretty, pretty eyes.

Dick Tracy, 8/14/22

It’s never been entirely clear what form of energy the Lunarians harness/generate with their antennae, but I guess we now know that it definitely raises temperature, right? Like if poor Marina had been torn apart by, like, magnetism or antigravity or something, her killers wouldn’t be staring at the carnage in icy disdain making a cruel remark about how it all smelled, the way they would about charred flesh? Or maybe they would. I don’t know what it smells like when someone is killed horribly by space aliens, I live my life correctly, thank you very much.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/14/22

Here’s a strip where the throwaway panels at the beginning make the whole thing profoundly sad. Like, Jughaid was explicitly invited to join a band, and but then sometime afterwards either left or was forced out and is now trying and failing to make it as a solo act. What emotionally fraught Fleetwood Mac-level band drama are we not being shown here?

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The Lockhorns, 8/13/22

The thing about the Lockhorns is that, while in one sense they’re millennials, in another sense they’re trapped in an eternal present in which they never age but their hateful marriage extends indefinitely into infinity, and so they’re always having to upgrade their mutual loathing into ever more baroque forms. It’s no longer enough for Leroy to just look at Loretta’s cooking and say something cutting with dead eyes; now he has to come up with some pretext to drag her to the tent section at REI and say “Look! No kitchen! Wouldn’t it be great to live here? To forage for mushrooms and berries, maybe trap small game, like our primitive ancestors did? Agriculture was a mistake, Loretta, a mistake, because it gave rise to cooking, which led to your cooking in particular. I’d rather get parasites from eating raw rabbit, Loretta! I really would!”

Dick Tracy, 8/13/22

Wow, this Lunarian supremicist faction within the Antarctic Lunarian colony really knows how to put on a show! Remember, having having a guy on stage ranting about seizing power and starting genocidal wars may have worked for Hitler, but in this day and age, people want to feel more connected to their despots. That’s why you want to have plants in the audience asking the questions whose answers reveal the true evil of your plans, making your bloodthirsty diatribe feel more like a bloodthirsty conversation among friends.

Pluggers, 8/13/22

Well, if you’re in Iowa, it’s probably a dizzy spell? Maybe go see a doctor, sir! A doctor can diagnose this better than a syndicated newspaper comic strip that illustrates reader jokes with folksy furries can, trust me on this!