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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/1/24

Obviously Snuffy Smith’s whole deal is that he doesn’t care about the greater good of the polity and routinely engages in lawbreaking and antisocial behavior, but I gotta say that this is a new low. Many Hootin’ Holler residents who enjoy a lazy day on the lake fishing from their little canoes — including Snuffy himself! — will now have their leisure disrupted by flatlanders zooming around in their big powerboats. And for what? Was this little joke so irresistible that he had to have the sign in his bedroom, and are his literacy and scrapwood-scavenging skills so lacking that he had to take the extremely nonprofessional looking sign down from the lake?

Dick Tracy, 7/1/24

Mr. Borden is being blackmailed by Mr. Gabriel in some way related to those those salacious pictures in a manila folder that were hinted at a couple of weeks ago. I’m impressed that today’s strip includes a shoutout to the famous album cover of Big Black’s “Songs About Being Blackmailed Over Salacious Pictures In A Manila Folder.”

Hi and Lois, 7/1/24

No you absolutely can not, kids! Something you did is what’s made her so upset in the first place!

Mary Worth, 7/1/24

Oh, silly Wilbur! Fish are innocents, incapable of sin, and you will not be meeting Stellan again in hell.

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Bizarro, 6/20/24

Happy Solstice, everyone! Do you think these ladies are supposed to represent the changing seasons, or that they’re just hanging out at a Neo-Pagan-themed bar? I don’t think the personified seasons would have cell phones, but if I were running a Neo-Pagan-themed bar, I’d make people keep their cell phones out of sight, because it very clearly ruins the vibe.

Dick Tracy, 6/20/24

Well well well, looks like everyone’s getting in on the Looking At Spicy Pictures In Manila Folders Action. Now, I think an important thing about art is that it can sometimes make you uncomfortable, which is how I know that the lady in panel two, her eyes bugging out and her lower lip pinned dramatically by her teeth, represents true art indeed.

Pluggers, 6/20/24

Pluggers! They’re in pain all the time! Are they dying? No, but they sure wish they were!

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Mary Worth, 6/19/24

One of the things one must always be on guard against is the brand of nostalgia that convinces you that the past was always better and that the world we live in is a fallen one. We must instead recognize that every age has its own highs or lows. Do we miss the days when Ian Cameron loomed larger in this strip, veering wildly from smug condescension to bug-eyed rage? Sure, yes, obviously. But current-day Ian’s still got it, as he goes for the one-two punch of “As a professor, I can say with confidence that your dead fish did not experience emotions even when it was alive” and then furiously stage-whispering in hopes that Wilbur will overhear as he solemnly accepts a Mourning Muffin from Mary.

Dick Tracy, 6/19/24

The current Dick Tracy storyline is not interesting enough for me to summarize, but I did think you’d all enjoy this strip, in which the MCU gals have figured out that an attractive lady is somehow tied into their current case and so have decided to download various pictures of her living her best life, print them on glossy photo paper, put them into a manila folder, and hand them over to Dick. The man is happily married but there’s no harm done here, he does not go on the computer and he’s earned this.

Alice, 6/19/24

As far as Alice Lore goes, “Alice accidentally fucked her cousin in college” is not quite as outlandish as “Alice was kidnapped by aliens,” but because it’s more grounded in reality it feels more menacing, I think.

Six Chix, 6/19/24

“Get it? We’re dogs! We literally bark up trees sometimes, even though we now also walk on our hind legs and wear clothes and run medical practices. Anyway, turns out you’re dying, sorry we didn’t figure this out six months ago when we maybe could’ve done something about it.”