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Mary Worth, 2/8/24

Move over, “celler door!” There’s a new most beautiful two-word phrase in the English language, and it’s “odd rock.” “Race you to that odd rock up ahead!” is a very normal phrase that native English speakers say to one another under all kinds of circumstances and there’s nothing strange or off-putting about it. Anyway, that odd rock definitely isn’t wide and flat, like an altar, and it definitely won’t be soon bedewed with the blood of the heretic Keith, with Kitty holding the obsidian dagger aloft while Sonia and Brad chant ecstatic praises to the Dark One who commands them. Some might say this is a situation that could’ve been avoided with a more timely DNA test, but I’m not here to judge.

Family Circus, 2/8/24

Damn, Dolly, I’m pretty sure PJ hasn’t grappled with the fleeting impermanence of life yet? This isn’t the fun kind of darndest thing to be saying, at all!

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Hi and Lois, 2/6/24

God, this one is super bleak. Lois has convinced herself that, sure, things are tight and they can’t afford to order pizza very often even though the kids are always whining for it, but what if she just learned how to make it herself? And what if the kids learned to love that even more than the crap from Dominio’s? “Mom’s homemade pizza,” they’d call it, and it would be a fond childhood memory they’d carry with them the rest of their lives, something they looked forward to, not a marker of her and Hi’s failure to provide them with what they really wanted. This fantasy lasts mere seconds into the children’s’ actual encounter with her malformed, fucked-up pizza, and look at her face — she is devastated.

Family Circus, 2/6/24

Jeffy, meanwhile, has been abandoned by his parents and is being forced to clean the house himself even though he’s a toddler, and he’s doing fine. “Noooo, Jeffy, you’re screwing this up, do you even know what cleaning is” Dolly whines in the background, but Jeffy doesn’t care. Look at that face. Cool competence and determination. He’s thriving for the first time in his short, dumb life.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/6/24

I often think that contemporary middle- and upper-class Americans create a culture of child safety that’s unprecedented in history, with children monitored at all times well into their teenage years and not given space to explore or gain useful life skills in ways that will be really damaging down the road. But then I see strips like this and think maybe there’s something to it.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/30/24

Oh yeah, so it turns out that Lyle “Old Man” Ollman is actually Rene/”Jimmy”‘s uncle! I admit I made fun of Lyle for not having the skill or charisma to get a self-help cult going in the 1970s, but today, as he declares that Rene rebranding the Ollman Technique as “Professor Mirakle™ Presents: Rene Belluso’s Mirakle Method (an Ollman Technique® Production) Featuring Fergus ‘Mud Mountain’ Murphy” to be the “one good thing” his wayward nephew has done, he reveals that he at least has the ego for it. He hasn’t spoke to Rene in years! He could have done all sorts of good things! I mean, he definitely hasn’t, but he could have!

Family Circus, 1/30/24

Is Dolly promoting a pantheistic view of the universe and assigning divinity to a pagan nature goddess? Or is she humbly avoiding conflating herself with the one creator God of the Trinity while still boasting of her artistic prowess? The Keane Council on Heresy (PJ and Barfy) are going to have a hard time with this one.

Pluggers, 1/30/24

Sure, only pluggers remember payphone-derived idioms and aphorisms. But also, only pluggers still think a dime is actually worthwhile to hold on to rather than something annoying in your pocket, so I’m afraid I don’t buy that our bear-man friend here would actually use one to act out his dramatic little response.