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Mary Worth, 4/11/17

It’s a good thing that Mary and Toby aren’t the kind of friends and travel companions who feel like they have to do everything together, because they obviously have very different interests. Mary, for instance, enjoys looking out over the waves thinking quietly to herself, “I love the sea! You know, in the abstract. I’m not going to swim in it or anything. It’s full of monsters!” Meanwhile, Toby is in the ship’s gym, running in place with a bunch of other workout nuts, shouting “It’s fun to stay at ♫ the Y-M-C-A! ♪” at the top of her lungs. They’re not playing the song on the gym soundsystem or anything and she’s not, it goes without saying, staying at the YMCA. She just likes yelling things.

Mark Trail, 4/11/17

Meanwhile, over in Mark Trail, things are taking a much grittier and more realistic turn than in the high-seas fantasy world of Mary Worth. “It has proven to be a good career for me to provide for my family!” says Mark, unaware that, even as he tussles with this illiterate gunman, back in New York analysts at the private equity firm that recently took over Woods and Wildlife Magazine’s near-bankrupt parent company are going over the books and discovering some truly hair-raising numbers. “So, this guy is on the payroll as a full-time employee with benefits, but he files maybe three, four stories a year? And he’s tied to the company’s skyrocketing insurance premiums? Well, first thing we do is shift him to contractor status. And we won’t need any more of these 12,000-word essays about ferrets or whatever; he’s welcome to send us some clickbait ‘You won’t BELIEVE which National Monuments have the most celebrity nude sunbathers’ slideshows for $250 a pop. OK, with that taken care of, let’s look at our spending on office space — I think there’s a lot of savings we can find there, too.”

Family Circus, 4/11/17

Oh, man, Billy is definitely just one step away from “and why isn’t there a WHITE history month????” right now.

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Pluggers, 4/4/17

Sometimes the point of Pluggers just seems to be “pluggers are old,” which, you know, nothing wrong with that, we’re all going to be old someday, if all goes to plan. These gags generally take the form of “Old pluggers have assumptions and cultural references that are now forgotten by younger people.” Today’s panel takes a somewhat different tack: this plugger looks just as baffled at the concept of “5 ¢ Milky Ways” as any indie-rock-addled hipster youth. The difference, I suppose, is that a young person would’ve downloaded their recipe from a fancy website to their iPhone or whatever, whereas the plugger is in touch with the long, unbroken chain of knowledge that goes back generations, preserving and copying these manuscripts dutifully like a medieval monk, even if they don’t fully understand it.

Six Chix, 4/4/17

Who says there’s nothing new under the sun? I would’ve thought sci-fi writers over the past century or so had already rather exhaustively detailed all the problems with time travel: you step on a butterfly and turn America fascist, you go back to meet Jesus and accidentally become Jesus, you have sex with some lady and become your own grandfather, etc. But nope, Six Chix has discovered something new: don’t you hate it when you think you’re going to the Renaissance or to our spacefaring future, but you just end up in some lady’s uterus, leaving her torso grotesquely distorted? We never should’ve meddled in the mysteries of the timestream!

Family Circus, 4/4/17

Look at those impossibly cheery faces! Definitely, definitely this involves murder somehow.

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Gil Thorp, 3/30/17

As usual, once this Gil Thorp plot shifted from its insane setup to its inane resolution, I sort of lost interest in it, and I apologize! Quick summary: Aaron’s mom is on drugs and so he often goes hungry because she’s spending the grocery money on drugs, which affected his athletic performance, so Gil took him out to eat a lot, and it seemed like maybe Aaron was going to get sent into foster care and he was mad at the Freezy Bomb Boys for inadvertently narcing on her, but then she agreed to go to rehab and came to a game where Aaron did well and now it turns out that the family of one of the Freezy Bomb Boys will be letting Aaron live in their basement, and presumably feeding him. I’m not clear on whether this guy’s Ken Brown or Mike Granger, but whoever he is, I hope he likes having raves in his basement, because Aaron is definitely going to be throwing a bunch of raves in his basement.

Dennis the Menace, 3/30/17

I will sheepishly admit that “Dennis cheerfully blurts out all the shit his parents talk about their friends and coworkers behind their backs” is one of my favorite from the list of typical menacing actions in this strip. You’d really think that the Mitchells would have figured out that little pitchers have big ears and no sense of discretion by this time, although what with Dennis being eternally five, who knows, maybe every single Dennis panel over the past 66 years only takes place over six months or so of strip time so they haven’t gotten used to it yet? Anyway, Henry really shouldn’t be speaking ill of four-time NFL Pro Bowler Alex Karras, who could almost certainly beat him up.

Family Circus, 3/30/17

Ha ha, it’s funny because the other Keane Kids don’t care about Billy’s emotional distress and would rather watch their TV show about a businessman mouse who lives in the jungle!

Blondie, 3/30/317

Having been thoroughly enervated by the ennui of suburban middle-class life, Dagwood can only be cheered by the prospect of his own agonizing death.