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Family Circus, 7/29/16

This whole week of Billy at camp, dangerously self-actualized and unwilling to put up with any degree of camp-related bullshit whatsoever, has almost transformed him in my mind into the hero we need. Look at the way he’s striding confidently out of the craft area! The best part is that he got most of the way through making his wallet, so his exit has maximum effect. Billy could make a wallet, he’s totally capable of making one, but he chooses not to, because it’s unnecessary. He’s like a damn Ayn Rand protagonist at this point.

Mark Trail, 7/29/16

At last, Mark Trail has unleashed the “Mark and Cherry are lounging around in swimsuits” strip to respond to the famous “Rex and June are lounging around in their underwear” Rex Morgan, M.D. strip. The Rex Morgan strip ran more than eight years ago, because soap opera strip feuds are just as slow-moving as actual soap opera strips.

Crankshaft, 7/29/16

Good news! Crankshaft’s dying!

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Family Circus, 7/18/16

Longtime readers know that the Family Circuses I like best are the ones where Billy is just an unapologetic little turd, so I particularly appreciate today’s panel, which features our boy leaning ecstatically out of the bus as he uses the brief moment of authority he’s been afforded to decide who gets to have fun and who doesn’t. Mommy and Daddy just look numb, probably because they know they’re going to have to deal with the squabbling that will break out in the wake of Billy’s last-minute diktats. The whole point of shipping him off to military school for the year was to avoid this kind of thing!

Six Chix, 7/18/16

Good lord, you cruel monster, that chicken isn’t wearing any shoes! How’s it supposed to click its heels together and apparate to the land where chickens are truly free, not just free to wander around a little yard? Is this something you do for fun, put on a pink dress and a tiara and taunt farm animals with the prospects of freedom?

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Pluggers, 7/14/16

I’ll say this for today’s Pluggers: it’s managed, without having heard of any of the bands, to put together an actually realistic summer concert series lineup, in the sense that it runs the gamut from relatively popular, relatively current acts (Animal Collective) through jam bands that had a minor mainstream breakthrough years ago but have been touring the festival circuit more or less nonstop both before and since (Rusted Root) to bands that were popular in the early ’90s and subsequently broke up but then a subset of the original members gained legal control of the band’s name and now are cashing in with a bunch of new people (Color Me Badd). We’ve rounded out the list with two separate bands who were apparently mistaken for one (Slightly Stoopid and SOJA, who are touring together this summer) and, apparently, just to stick it to know-it-alls like me, the truly obscure “Kongas,” which as near as I can tell was the name under which Marc Cerrone, an “Italofrench disco drummer, composer, record producer and creator of major concert shows,” released a couple of albums in the late ’70s. I guess it’s probably more likely that this is a mistake for Kongos, a band that’s in that first category with Animal Collective, but I want to believe that we’re talking Italofrench disco drummer here.

Mary Worth, 7/14/16

Oh man, it looks like Tommy’s upcoming opioid addiction’s going to arise from a bad interaction between a lower back injury … and broken heart. I guess this is why you shouldn’t start dating someone before you start growing your hair back out. The relationship begins under false pretenses. They won’t know the real you.

Family Circus, 7/14/16

Mommy’s grim facial expression tells us exactly what she thinks of the MPAA’s censorious reign of prudery and its effect on film as an art form. “More like a Profoundly Grotesque stifling of cinema’s ability to shock us out of our comfort zones,” she thinks, glowering at her hopelessly middlebrow children.