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Mary Worth, 7/25/17

It’s not a secret than the world of newspaper comics is small and getting smaller, and that I’m the only person who’s written about newspaper comics every day for the last 13 years, so obviously I’m on the radar of a lot of comics creators. And sometimes they let me know that they’ve taken notice of me, by means ranging from outright hostility in the comic itself to sending me free stuff in the mail in a successful attempt to get me to promote their branded products. So whenever someone who looks kinda like me pops up in a strip, I think, “Hmm, is this someone who looks kind of like me … supposed to be me?” Generally things are made more ambiguous by the fact that my look isn’t exactly the least common around. Anyway, if this redheaded goateed doctor is in fact supposed to be my in-strip avatar, I take that as a compliment, as he seems supportive of his colleagues, a quality I admire and aspire to. Also the artists have noticed that I started wearing glasses last year, nice job!

One thing I (or my alter ego) won’t have to worry about is being the object of Dawn’s moon-eyed affections, which is I assume where this plot is going, since the Dawn plots always seem to involve her sad romantic life in some way, whether it involves her slapping people she was actually dating when she discovered them two-timing her or prolonging weird, sexually charged friendships with various amputees and adjunct community college faculty members. Our beardy doctor is clearly just passing through this plot to establish the awesome diagnostic prowess of the handsome Ned, who can swiftly identify rare and obscure maladies but also grows his hair long enough to cover his ears, because he doesn’t care what The Man thinks. Just the sort of fella to catch a young girl’s fancy, if you know what I mean, and you will definitely know what I mean after Dawn mopily falls in love with him for the next six to eleven weeks.

Family Circus, 7/25/17

Aww, Billy was going to feed that human finger to one of the tigers and make its whole day. Why you gotta be such a narc, Dolly?

Beetle Bailey, 7/25/17

You know, I had a post all planned out today about Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, and how the decade-wide time discontinuity between them is increasingly irritating — I even had some reference data about the average price of movie tickets over the years! — but then I realized that I was failing on my stated intention to not actually care about that, at all. They’re getting inside my head, man! So instead, here’s today’s Beetle Bailey, which is about how Otto the dog hates cat beatniks but sure wants to fuck sexy lady dogs. Also, this sexy lady dog may be a prostitute.

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Spider-Man, 7/20/17

It’s true that whatever media conglomerate owns the film rights to the Marvella franchise botched the initial rollout. What with the notoriously troubled production of the first movie in the series, the studio naturally decided to dump it straight to DVD — but surprisingly strong sales got people excited enough to do a theatrical release for Marvella 2. But for a big rollout like that to succeed, you need a huge marketing machine. So yes, MJ is going to have to do publicity not just in San Francisco but also Denver. The studio has just that much riding on the success of this film. Don’t be surprised if they try to jam in an appearance in Phoenix on this junket too. No expense will be spared!

Speaking of sparing no expense, one of the fun things about living LA is that it’s incredibly expensive but it’s also full of transplants from New York, an even more expensive place, who assure you that $2,000 a month for an unassuming two-bedroom bungalow in a marginally sketchy neighborhood is “a real bargain, you’d pay twice that much for a studio in Manhattan and you wouldn’t even have a yard.” So yeah, I can see that planning a SoCal wedding might seem like a bargain if your frame of reference is the tri-state area, but neither Aunt May nor Mole-Man have any family in the region (his being enslaved by the foul Tyrannus miles beneath the Earth’s crust and hers being, uh, Peter and MJ), so they might want to look further afield. I hear Denver is nice!

Family Circus, 7/20/17

The Family Circus, being largely pieced together from decades-old art, preserves an earlier America where we were much less paranoid about safety, especially when it came to children. For instance, in a post-Harambe world, would anyone let a kid climb on a short fence separated from a potentially dangerous elephant by just a few feet of level grass and another, equally short fence? They might, if that kid were Billy, and they got to know him for a few minutes.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/20/17

Haha, whoops, sorry to rain on Rex’s nerd dreams, but li’l John Carter was named after something actually cool. I assume Rex will be angrily muttering that Margie is a “fake geek girl” under his breath for the remainder of her visit.

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Gasoline Alley, 7/11/17

Ugh, fine, I guess I will supply some cursory backstory on what’s going on in Gasoline Alley, which is that this freaky-lookin’ dude was briefly irritated by two children while fishing because they thought he was weird and scary looking, and probably we’re going to learn some valuable lessons about ugly hermits with hearts of gold and not judging a book by its cover and blah blah blah, but really today’s final panel makes it look like the guy is coolly examining the unconscious kid with his single eye, trying to determine how best to cook and eat him.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/11/17

I feel like the whole “Starbuck Jones is a movie!” thing has spiraled completely out of hand in Funky Winkerbean, as it started with our sad-sack comics-obsessed characters writing for a neglected comic book hero and now they’re giving a presentation at ComicCon as part of its multimillion-dollar marketing push. It would be like if Joe Shlabotnik got called up to the majors and batted .335 and Charlie Brown got hired as his personal assistant during his team’s undefeated playoff run? Anyway, mostly I’m featuring today’s strip to point out that that, in addition to suffering the general indignity of appearing in Funky Winkerbean, famously ginger Conan O’Brien has been transformed into a blond by the syndicate colorists, possibly because they can’t tell that he and Mason Jarre as supposed to be different people.

Family Circus, 7/11/17

Ha ha, yes Jeffy, it’s there to bury the evidence! (Specifically, the evidence that you or your siblings ever existed.)