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Family Circus, 4/5/22

I’ve been doing this blog for many, many years and my attitude about many of the comics has evolved in ways I never expected, and one of the ways I least expected is that I have come to respect some of the subtle dry wit in the Family Circus. In today’s panel, for instance, Mrs. Crisp is giving Billy a semi-defeated “is this little moron shitting me” look, which, once you learn to recognize it, a surprising number adults use when interacting with the Keane Kids, including their parents.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/5/22

Funky Winkerbean has accrued a truly epic amount of lore over its decades of existence, and I was about to apologize to you for not having it all at my fingertips, but you know what? It’s good and normal to not remember Funky Winkerbean plots from decades ago and I’m not apologizing for practicing self-care by refusing to retain information about them! Anyway, the last few weeks of this strip have been about Crazy Harry’s teen days as an arcade-based video gamer, and how his arch-rival was a person who wore a helmet and was known as “The Eliminator,” and that person turned out to be … the woman he would later marry. I have no idea if this was how the storyline actually played out way back in the early run in the strip or if it’s been retconned in a “What if a great video game player … were a girl, really makes you think” way, and I don’t care to do the research to find out. What’s important is that Crazy Harry has put on “The Eliminator”‘s helmet, and it’s apparently now some kind of VR/metaverse thing, only instead of taking you to a fantastic world beyond your imagination, it just plops you down right next to Les and Lisa’s special park bench, where you too can experience your wife dying of cancer in vivid 3-D.

Dick Tracy, 4/5/22

Ah, it appears that “Coffyhead,” using the clever alias “Moka,” is about to tangle with Vitamin Flintheart’s manager “Coffee Grounds.” I usually find “Don’t talk to me till I’ve had my coffee!” jokes pretty dumb, but I’m beginning to think that the Dick Tracy creative team should in fact not talk to anyone or start working on Dick Tracy until they’ve had their coffee.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/5/22

Oh, I’m sorry, are you still griping because the comic strip Rex Morgan, M.D., doesn’t do medical-themed storylines often enough for your taste? Well, they’re just going to spend weeks on the most boring injuries you can imagine until you beg for more stuff about “roots country” or whatever the fuck.

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Family Circus, 3/27/22

I actually think this is a pretty clever strip, though I would argue that, just as the strip sometime updates old art to acknowledge that flatscreen TVs exist, it could’ve improved things by maybe updating some of the fashion choices on these imaginary old people, since those constitute a pretty important aspect of what you think an old person looks like and how others perceive how old they are! But the funniest thing to me is the quip from Big Daddy Keane that sets this off. Can you imagine someone bringing up a mutual acquaintance and your first reaction is “That guy? Oh yeah, he’s old. He’s old as shit. Doddering motherfucker with one foot in the grave. Wears adult diapers, probably.” Anyway, I would type out more terms of abuse here, but then it occurred to me that the typical person whose oldest child is 7 is probably younger than I am by as much as a decade so I’m gonna go have a nice lie down for a few hours.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/27/22

And I’m back! With this one I mainly want to point out the “I still don’t know what this is!” in the right panel in the second row. That’s called an author’s signature, Sarah! It’s how you know who drew this comic! I can’t believe after all you’ve been through you’re still sneering at people’s attempts to establish their ownership of their intellectual property!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/27/22

Kind of surprised it’s taken almost two years for the comics to engage with the “30-50 feral hogs” meme, but the specific strip that was the first to do so is not a surprise at all.

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Family Circus, 3/25/22

I very distinctly remember the moment more than four years ago when I read this article about the “raw water” movement in the New York Times because it drove me very nearly to despair. Basically, starting around 150 years ago humanity began to achieve something that would’ve been deemed near-miraculous by any other civilization in history — safe-to-drink water delivered at incredibly low cost to almost every home — and now that we’re a couple generations removed from anyone who remembers what life was like before that, people are instead selling unsterilized spring water for $15 a gallon and saying stuff like “They’re putting in fluoride — call me a conspiracy theorist, but it’s a mind-control drug” to reporters. It’s bad! It’s real bad! On the other hand, if it’s gonna result in Jeffy and Billy getting killed by cholera, I guess I can’t complain too much.

Mary Worth, 3/25/22

Oh my god, this is too good. This is perfect. I love everything happening here. I love Cal dropping “have you tried just not thinking about your problems” like it’s sage advice, and I really love that Helen has busted out binoculars for her Toby-spying needs. I’m assuming Helen isn’t, like, an ornithology professor (because I assume most community colleges don’t have ornithology departments) so she brought those in to work specifically for looking at Toby’s brazen flirtations from afar. Who knows what further madness her obsession with cock-blocking Toby will lead her to! Keep it up, Helen!

Shoe, 3/25/22

The fact that the creative team behind Shoe thinks that “being an artist” is a ticket to financial independence reveals a lot frankly surprising information about how lucrative Shoe is.