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Mary Worth, 10/29/19

Oh boy oh boy oh boy, I am very excited to watch the total emotional meltdown our boy Wilbur is going to experience during his double date with Iris and her handsome young stud and, uh, some other lady who’s temporarily slipping his mind right now, probably she’s not very important. The biggest question that we’re going to need answered: when his brain breaks, what form will it take? Will the massive flood of negative feelings be directed outward, at Iris and Zak, leading to him getting kicked out of the restaurant at best and slapped with a restraining order at worst? Or will it all go inward, at himself, leaving his ex and her perfectly nice boyfriend to spend an evening awkwardly consoling him as he weeps loudly into his appetizer? (Estelle at this point will have excused herself to the bathroom, where she’ll escape out the window and flee to the nearby frontage road so she can summon an Uber.)

Blondie, 10/29/19

I guess the joke here is that the only thing that could make it worth Lou’s while to deal with job-killing government regulations is Dagwood’s insatiable appetite. But my initial interpretation, which I find much funnier, is that Dagwood is just now learning that for whatever reason in his town the health department subjects food trucks to much stricter scrutiny than restaurants, so when a food truck parks in front of his office, he’s excited to finally enjoy a lunch that won’t cause him terrible diarrhea.

Dustin, 10/29/19

“Autumn is here … it’s the season for apprehension and dread.”

“You’re thinking about Halloween?”

“No, I’m thinking about how watching the leaves wither and fall from the trees makes me realize that all life is ephemeral, about how winter is coming and how it feels colder in my bones every year as I age, about how I know that while spring comes around again every year, eventually it won’t come around for me. Uh, I mean, pumpkin spice, am I right? So basic! I’m definitely not haunted by visions of my own demise!”

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Dustin, 10/12/19

I’ve decided that the key to enjoying Dustin is to ignore its ostensible “hook” as a comic about the generational friction between millennials and boomers, because in that frame it comes off as an annoying exercise in shitting on young people in general; instead, I’m just going to treat it as the story of one particular millennial, the title character, who pretty much sucks ass. With that mindset, today’s strip, in which an grown adult is playing catch with a child to whom he’s not related, and then his mother comes by and humiliates him in front of that child, is particularly enjoyable.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/12/19

You ever notice how in the original, funny Funky Winkerbean strips, there’s lots of silly, overblown conflict, but in the current, depressing iteration of the strip, everyone is for the most part very tender with one another, maybe passive aggressive at worst? I guess living with the spectre of death looming over you at all times really does improve your behavior.

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Mark Trail, 9/14/19

“Shh, Cherry, shhh, everything will be OK … I promise you,” Mark said, gently but firmly removing the Cherry-unit’s head so her system would deactivate and he could safely store her. “No need to worry her,” he thought. “I’ll just reassemble her when I get back from Nepal and she’ll never even realize I was gone.”

Dustin, 9/14/19

Hot tip for dude cartoonists: if you ever have the urge to do a strip about how “ha ha, women sure sometimes just SLATHER ON THE MAKEUP, amiright”, just be sure your lady characters are the ones doing the talking! Then it’ll all be on the up and up. We all know how catty women are, right? Mrr-ow!

The Phantom, 9/14/19

Hey, if you’ve been reading The Phantom for a while and you ever wondered “Hmm, would someone raised from birth to be a gun-toting warrior who goes on to suffer incredible physical and psychological trauma on mission after mission end up with, like, PTSD, maybe,” today’s dream sequence has some answers for you!