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Mary Worth, 11/14/22

I have to say that I’m proud of our girl Iris here: the fact that she was almost dragged to her death by the weight of her hunky boyfriend’s rippling muscles is intrinsically far more interesting than the fact that she later accepted his marriage proposal, and she’s right to lead with it. I’ll even allow her to imply that the big story was her own potential doom, which seemed a lot less likely thank Zak’s, if only because it’ll rattle Mary’s cage a little. “That’s right, Mary, I’m out there getting that high you can only get by staring your own mortality in the face. What’s the closest you’ve ever come to meeting your maker lately? Letting Dr. Jeff steer the boat when he’s had two Michelob Ultras?”

Dennis the Menace, 11/14/22

This is definitely one of the grimmest panels Dennis the Menace has ever done. Every night Mr. Wilson has one nightmare, the same one that also occupies his every waking moment. Keep pulling on whatever you’ve wrapped around his neck, Dennis, and put him out his misery.

Dustin, 11/14/12

A fun fact about Dustin, the newspaper comic strip about the conflicts between feckless young people and their older family members who genuinely despite them, is that it’s one of the newer comics in the syndicated world and yet was also launched in 2010, which I regret to inform you was a full 12 years ago at this point. Now, in 2010, would a storyline about a young person trying out this new “blogging” business make sense? Sure, barely. Does it now, in the year of our lord 2022? Let me assure you that it very much does not. As America’s #1 newspaper comics blogger, I am uniquely positioned to deliver this sad news.

Pluggers, 11/14/12

ME [in a room full of high-powered Hollywood executives/perverts]: Gentlemen, it’s been more than 20 years since we made history with American Pie, the story of a teenage boy who fucks a pie. America’s gotten a lot weirder since then. So what if, for our next move… [I advance the PowerPoint slide deck to reveal “PLUGGERS: THE MOVIE: A BEAR FUCKS AN ICE CREAM CONE”] [the Hollywood perverts shower me with $100 bills]

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Gasoline Alley, 11/10/22

Gasoline Alley is, I admit, one of those strips I read out of a sense of professional obligation rather than a true inborn enthusiasm. Yet one can derive a real satisfaction from achievements that are wholly professional in nature! For instance, I’ve managed to keep the “Rufus is fucking the mayor” plot thread close enough to the top of my mind that when I read the final panel of today’s strip I nodded sagely and thought to myself, “Ah, Walt’s going to get to ride on the back of a garbage truck, just like his hero Denzel Washington, because Rufus is fucking the mayor,” whereas I assume the typical comic reader simply shook their head in confusion and disgust before moving on to Garfield.

Judge Parker, 11/10/22

Oh, hey, remember how Abbey was running for mayor? Well, she lost, and she’s mainly mad that her ex, who for once in his life is doing something interesting, didn’t text her about it. Abbey is by my count the third character in this strip to unsuccessfully run for mayor, and frankly I can’t get enough of it. Keep losing, losers!

Dustin, 11/10/22

Look, I don’t care if Dustin dies first or his dad does. But one of them has got to go. At least one. They can’t keep taunting me like this.

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Dustin, 11/7/22

Oh, I’m sorry, did you think that the syndicated comic Dustin was done airing its petty grievances about air travel? Well, you thought wrong, buddy. Today’s petty grievance: when people fly on a commercial airline, an experience during which they are generally dehumanized in various ways, why don’t they simply choose to dress in a manner that society in the year 2022 reserves only for our most formal contexts, like a court appearance or a funeral? Is it because they don’t want to feel even less comfortable than they already do while they’re crammed into a too-small seat for three to seven hours? Is it because, simply as a practical matter, the nature of air travel often results in the clothes you’re wearing getting wrinkled or sweaty or soiled? Is it because human civilization is falling into a state of barbarism? Probably the last one, right? Anyway, the first panel here gives you a good hint as to which airline’s negative vibes provided the material for these strips, but doesn’t spell it out because presumably large multinational corporations are better equipped to crush a syndicated newspaper comic strip’s creative team in court than, say, a Tampa-area Mercedes dealership is.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/7/22

I was wondering why Funky Winkerbean decided to tinker with its timeline, again, making the main cast’s recent high school reunion their fiftieth and pushing the characters from late middle age well into retirement territory. Now we’ve learned that it’s because of plans to change the setting to a near-future dystopia where accelerating climate change is increasingly impossible to ignore. Sure, the folks in Westview didn’t care much about famine-inducing disruption to agriculture in the tropics or the Colorado River basically drying up, but now that “climate damage” has somehow delayed the shipment of an anthology of comics that were published decades ago, we’re going to get to the bottom of this global warming business, by God.

Six Chix, 11/7/22

Someday I hope to have a meeting with a Hollywood exec with the promise of a “hot IP” and go in hard with the pitch that everything Franz Kafka wrote is now in the public domain. Sure, we all know Gregor Samsa died at the end of “The Metamorphosis” (actually, I had forgotten this, I had to read the plot summary for the story on Wikipedia), but what if he had instead left his depressing home and unloving family in Prague and struck out on his own to find his own way in the world? And what if he ended up as a stoner doorman somewhere in New York City? I think this would be a great eight-episode limited series on Paramount+.