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Family Circus, 11/8/18

Ha ha, I love how smug that frog looks. “That’s right, buddy, you better back the heck off. There’s no way to be sure about my royal status. Unless you want to kiss me? No? You don’t want to kiss me? Guess I’ll be on my way, then. See ya, chumps!”

Gil Thorp, 11/8/18

Oh wow, I haven’t been keeping you up to date on the Gil Thorp football season, huh? I guess it’s because it’s been super boring, with the month since we learned that Tiki is often late for mysterious sister-related reasons mostly taken up by two of Tiki’s less dim teammates slowly piecing together that Tiki seems unfamiliar with the major landmarks around his supposed residence and may not live in Milford at all. Anyway, today the Gil Thorp creative team apparently noticed we’re more than a week into November and we need to start wrapping this up, because suddenly we got a lot of exciting info, maybe implying that Tiki isn’t really who he says at all! An imposter! A changeling! A 32-year-old investigative reporter who’s writing a longform piece on America’s most mediocre high school football programs! The possibilities are endless and really quite cinematic, which makes it too bad that the other football season plot, the one about the irritating cineaste punter, is going nowhere just as fast.

Judge Parker, 11/18/18

Oh, wow, I haven’t been keeping you up to date on Judge Parker, huh? Well, here’s what’s going on in Judge Parker: Judge Parker Senior is going to jail, finally.

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/2/18

So there’s been this whole Funky Winkerbean plotline where Wally (who now appears to be, like, 50?) and a Muslim woman named Adeela have been paired up by their professor on a project, with various flashbacks to his service in Iraq and others showing that she used to live in a country under U.S. occupation being offered as evidence of their unarticulated discomfort with each other. We all assumed that eventually they would learn to respect/understand/live with one another, obviously, because that’s how these kinds of plots work, but who could’ve predicted this extremely Funkyverse twist: the emotional turning point would come when they realize they had shared trauma in common! Let’s not argue about who invaded whose homeland and left it a ruin, or who held who as a POW for a decade leading everyone back home to think you were dead in violation of all history and reality. The point as that we both suffer involuntary panic attacks due to the horrible things we’ve seen and experienced in our life, so let’s hit the books and get to work on that project, OK?

Family Circus, 11/2/18

My absolute favorite thing about this is that Big Daddy Keane has chosen to give PJ, who is literally a baby, tiny plastic toys that would be a choking hazard for a child twice his age. And look how proud he is of himself! And how proud Mommy is of him! They’re definitely going to go upstairs and have sex, while Jeffy goes into anaphylactic shock and Billy pretends he knows how to read.

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Mary Worth, 10/17/18

Oh my god, it’s even better than I could’ve hoped: Mary is going to force emotional progress on Mr. Wynter by driving him to the pet shelter and browbeating him into adopting a pet while he begs her to stop! This is of course a terrible way to deal with a man’s sadness over a lost dog, simultaneously rushing the grieving process and belittling the specific bond he felt with his unique beloved pup. Honestly, though, my take is: why stop here? Why not just take things to their logical conclusion? Remember Saul’s devastation over the the loss of the love of his life? Why doesn’t Mary just drag him down to some adult education class that skews female — quilting? — and say “Maybe we can also cheer up a lonely widow or divorceé and make their day!” Saul will cling desperately to the side of the car, but with her persistence and surprising upper body strength, Mary will ensure that Saul loves again, whether he wants to or not.

Mark Trail, 10/17/18

A lot of people have been begging in the comments for me to check in on the Mark Trail storyline, which they’ve claimed is “exciting,” which, are you kidding me, it’s consisted entirely of Rusty and Mara having a weird, awkward conversation with “Backpack Guy” about which parts of this small Mexican town aren’t safe for two American tourist kids, one of whom is an obvious moron. However, I do of course need to present today’s strip to you, since it features the triumphant return of Extremely Cool Motorcycle Dude, who definitely seems to be from a different faction from Backpack Guy. Which of these two artifact-stealing-adjacent groups has Rusty and Mara’s best interests at heart? Is it neither of them? Can it please be neither of them? That’d be great.

Dick Tracy, 10/17/18

This Dick Tracy storyline has been remarkably short and low on character motivation — just a couple weeks after we’ve been introduced to Pauly and suddenly he’s a guy who’s always wanted to kill Dick Tracy, blah blah blah, now he and Dick are firing pistols at each other at close range and making no attempt to dive for cover or anything, etc., etc. Mostly I want to point out that Pauly looks like you put Dick and Sam together in the transporter pod from The Fly and turned the Color Palette knob all the way to “brown.”

Family Circus, 10/17/18

Today’s Family Circus features the Keane Kids staring at their parents’ increasingly passionate embrace, commenting upon, but not quite comprehending, the difference between the erotic bonds between the two adults and the filial bonds between parents and children. It’s the best panel they’ve presented us with in years!