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Hi and Lois, 8/31/18

I am living for the disappointed looks on the faces of Hi and Other Friend Of Thirsty And Possibly Hi in panel two here! While both of these gentlemen wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to horn in on their wives’ bonding time with their female friends, they had always been jealous of their book clubs, and when they got Thirsty’s unexpected invite, they were thrilled: an intellectual salon, a meeting of the minds that would deepen their male bonds! But no, it’s just another opportunity to do low-level crimes, and lose money to boot. Maybe the two of them should start their own book club. It’s not too late, fellas! Overcome that masculine reserve and live your literary dreams!

Mark Trail, 8/31/18

Some of you have wondered: in these difficult times for journalism, how can Woods and Wildlife Magazine possibly keep up its expensive longform niche journalism, paying for long trips overseas for its writers (along with their outrageous travel insurance premiums) and still making rent on its posh Manhattan offices even as advertising rates plummet? Well, the answer is that while Americans may be spending their days endlessly noodling around on social media, consumers in the Latin American market still hunger for fascinating stories about our natural world (World War I era airplanes count as part of the natural world if they fall into a sinkhole).

Family Circus, 8/31/18

Finally, I’ve acknowledged to myself that making a joke about the Keane Kids as part of a horrifying, incestous planned breeding program to create some kind of genetically pure “holy race” is both distasteful and also doesn’t have much support in the comic itself. Now to take a big sip of coffee and read today’s Family Circus!

Funky Winkerbean, 8/31/18

Ha ha, if an absolutely furious old man is screaming abuse at people in the form of unfunny wordplay, it must be Funky Winkerbean!

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Dennis the Menace, 8/25/18

If I know my Dennis Mitchell, he’d never say “he will” rather than “he’ll.” And if I know my genre conventions, inappropriate failure to use contractions is a sign that what we’re dealing with here is an android, presumably one that Mr. Wilson built in his garage workshop to make him feel like he has some kind of control over his life. “Ha ha,” says the Dennis-bot, “Mr. Wilson will need a calculator to count so many calories, because biological life forms are not good at mathematicak operations, even simple ones like addition!” George looks incredibly smug because he knows he could turn Dennis off whenever he wants.

Family Circus, 8/25/18

“Your eyes, Daddy!” Dolly exclaimed, grabbing at them with her short, stumpy fingers. “So wise and learnèd.” She began to really dig in there with her surprisingly sharp nails. “I want them.” Her voice deepened, and echoed like something very far away, yet at the same time rose to a deafening pitch. “I want your eyes. Give them to me. Give me your eyes. I want them.”

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Crock, 8/10/18

So, uh, seven years ago Bill Rechin, the creator of Crock, died, and then a year after that his son Kevin, who had taken over, said that continuing the strip made him depressed so he wasn’t going to do it anymore, and, uh, well, it’s 2018 now and Crock still appears on King Features’ website (and presumably in print newspapers, who can say, someone who still subscribes to a print newspaper, I guess) with “©2018” at the bottom, and I just have never really gotten a handle on whether they’re reruns or someone is still churning these out or what. What I’m saying is, it might’ve been just barely possible in 2011 to imagine that there was a living person who believed that “chat rooms” were a kind of online space that was common and that “Dear chat room” was a normal and believable way someone introduced themselves there. Today, though, when we have Facebook groups like “Carrion Eaters Discussion Group (Positive Vibes Only)” and subreddits like /r/eatersofthedead and probably darkweb sites where you can use bitcoin to buy meat at exactly the right level of rottedness for your needs — well, this strip needs to get with the times, is what I’m saying.

Family Circus, 8/10/18

Jeffy is at that developmental stage where he thinks that the ability to record language via writing is “hip” and “with it” but can’t actually read yet. I guess Big Daddy Keane was banking on at least one of the literate kids being with the younger ones at all times, forgetting what he ought to know deep in his bones: nobody wants to hang around with Jeffy.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/10/18

Because I hate myself, I actually dug through my archives to find the last wedding they had at Montoni’s, which was apparently back in 2014, although that was when Wally and Rachel tried to get married outdoors but were driven by a vengeful God into Northeast Ohio’s most depressing pizza parlor. Speaking of hating yourself, though, Cory and Rocky look to be actually contemplating using the family’s grease-stained sadness hole as their Plan A, possibly because it’s the only retail business in town still in business other than Komix Korner and they still have just the tiniest shred of dignity left.

Gasoline Alley, 8/10/18

“I always say — most of our material circumstances are determined by inherited wealth, and meritocracy is a lie!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/10/18

THAT’S MY BOY! THIS IS THE HIGH POINT OF MY LIFE! MY MARRIAGE TO YOUR MOTHER, YOUR FIRST STEPS — ALL BULLSHIT! THIS IS THE BEST GAME OF PINBALL I’VE EVER PLAYED AND I’M GONNA SPEND MY FEW REMAINING YEARS WATCHING IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, SO KEEP FILMING OR SO HELP ME GOD YOU’LL REGRET IT