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Family Circus, 3/11/19

Look, I long ago gave up on trying to figure out how exactly the process operates behind the scenes of long-running legacy comic strips, so I’m not sure why we got two Family Circus panels in the last three years with different art but essentially the same joke. Is this just a case of someone unconsciously coming up with the same joke twice and then redrawing a Dolly-praying-before-bed panel, or, perhaps more likely, pulling out a different entry from the presumably fairly sizable collection of Dolly-praying-before-bed panels? Or are the two panels meant to be companion pieces? Back in 2016, Dolly said the pledge because she couldn’t think of any “new” prayers. Today, she couldn’t even remember the Lord’s Prayer, perhaps the most important in the Christian canon, because all the space in her mind dedicated to devotional rituals is now occupied by nationalistic display. Truly, the Keane Kompound is under seige!

Dick Tracy, 3/11/19

The joke here is that Joe Sampson, the detective who came to town last week with lurid tales of gym teach murder, is Dick’s daughter Bonnie’s ex. But if you didn’t know that, you might think that Dick is just furious that Bonnie isn’t hanging on his every word. “Bonnie? How dare you be distracted, a man is talking.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/11/19

Hootin’ Holler is grindingly poor, with an economy revolving around subsistence farming, moonshining, and chicken theft, and it’s an open question as to how the various outsiders who come into town to serve professional roles eke out a living. Parson Tuttle makes it work with relentless and unapologetic grifting, but Doc Pritchart has it easier: his practice is just a front for nonstop Medicaid fraud.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/11/19

“That would mean someone might want to spend enough time with me to have a sexual relationship some day, and, really: have you gotten a handle on my personality over the past few hours? I don’t think that’s in the cards.”

Slylock Fox, 3/11/19

“Ha ha, it’s a baby! A baby was born on board! Pretty wild, huh? Now everyone calm down and let’s figure out which one of us has to drown. Should it be the baby?”

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Judge Parker, 2/24/19

Oh, hey, Judge Parker! Here’s what’s been going in Judge Parker: the police of the tropical island paradise where Marie was enjoying her honeymoon with Roy were only suggesting that she had killed him in order to flush him out of hiding, because it turned out he had embezzled a bunch of money from his employer and faked his death and now was on an entirely different resort island several thousand miles away. Obviously Marie is very broken up about this, which is why it’s extremely kind of Sam to let her fly back to the States in business class with him, right before she has to go back to cleaning his underwear and cooking him dinners that he’ll briefly acknowledge with a grunt before eating in stony silence.

Family Circus, 2/24/19

Oh, isn’t that cute! This hill is haunted by the ghosts of all the other children who died sledding down its steep, dangerous slopes! Look at Big Daddy Keane’s little smile: he knows.

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Dick Tracy, 2/18/19

In case for some reason you’re interested in how the various strands of the current Dick Tracy plot fit together: Splitface, who used to be Haf and Haf, also used to be married to Zelda the high diver, who is also Vitamin Flintheart’s goddaughter, and was I think going to go on a date with the drunkard playing Dick in the play Vitamin is in, but then she got kidnapped by Splitface, who used to be Haf and Haf and also her husband, despite the fact that she had been assigned a police protection detail because Splitface, who used to be Haf and Haf, had sworn vengeance on her for some reason I forget now, possibly because he’s insane, I dunno, it’s Dick Tracy, it’s not super nuanced. Anyway, it sure is a lousy break for Zelda, isn’t it? Getting kidnapped by her deranged ex-husband, who presumably wants to murder her or worse? Just a piece of darn rotten luck that certainly the agency that knew about the threat to her and promised to protect her isn’t responsible for in any way.

Family Circus, 2/18/19

Oh, snap, is the Family Circus going to get political? It’s a good thing Big Daddy Keane is wearing that kevlar vest, as this single-panel comic in which kids say the darndest things was the last bit of shared pop culture holding our frayed national fabric together, and now that’s “gone partisan” the violent civil war is about to erupt.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/18/19

Ha ha, it’s funny because Linda has to choose between retiring comfortably and spending time with her addled husband as he rapidly declines! Like, literally, that’s the joke here in today’s knee-slapping Funky Winkerbean, a newspaper comic they print where children can see it!