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Blondie, 12/17/22

I spent a probably embarrassing amount of time staring at this thinking “Which of the third-tier Blondie characters is this dressed up as Santa at the bowling alley with Dagwood and Herb? Is it one of the carpool guys, or maybe the barber?” before I realized that … it’s supposed to actually be Santa, I think? Santa is real, within the Blondie universe? He’s real and he goes bowling with random suburbanites, just days before Christmas, in what should be his workshop’s busiest time of year?

Pluggers, 12/17/22

I guess that’s better than the Pluggers universe, where Santa is also real — a real freakish man-animal of some kind, that is, and he also treats body positivity as a weird series of contests.

Gasoline Alley, 12/17/22

Gertie, “Who’s On First” hit the peak of its popularity in the 1940s! I’m pretty sure you’re too young to know about it.

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Mary Worth, 12/12/22

Good morning and happy Monday, everybody! Definitely what we all wanted after putting a relaxing weekend behind us to log in and see this:

Look, there’s been a lot of buzz about AI programs that can generate art from prompts lately, but I’m pretty sure none of them could take “show the weird fake-happy-but-actually-enraged face your old-enough-to-be-your-mother babysitter would make at you to mock you for the infantile games you played at dinner with your former babysitter, who looks just like her” and come up with … this:

That’s the human touch, baby! That’s the level of passive aggression only Mary Worth and its carbon-based creative team can deliver, which why I’m proud to keep you up to date on it. Ha ha, look at how chill Zak is in panel two! This is all just a normal part of the world, to him!

Funky Winkerbean, 12/12/22

I’m sorry, did you find the big “actually, everything weird that’s happened in this strip for the past ten years is due to time travel” reveal to be disappointing? Well, you’ll be happy to hear we’re shifting to an “it was all a dream” ending, something that has never disappointed anyone ever.

Gasoline Alley, 12/12/22

I love that Walt’s big garbage truck ride was part of his “bucket list” — that is, the things he wanted to do before he died — but he assures Mayor Melba that he’ll treasure the memory “forever.” Because that’s how long he’ll be alive! He’ll keep aging and aging but never know the sweet release of death! Sorry, Mayor Melba, you’re just a walk-on player in somebody else’s hell.

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Dick Tracy, 12/4/22

Look, here’s a tough message to all you “social justice warriors” out there: if you would simply allow police to do their jobs by hounding suspects to their ironic deaths, and if juries on the trials for those few cases where someone survives to go to court would just “serve cheerfully and use [their] best judgement” (i.e., convict in all cases) as the Crimestoppers Textbook suggests, then we could all live in a utopian paradise like Neo-Chicago, where selling counterfeit animation cels to furries is a crime considered major enough to attract the Major Crime Unit’s attention.

Gasoline Alley, 12/4/22

America’s population, and its newspaper comics reading population in particular, is rapidly aging, and many yearn for simple pleasures, like having a live-in domestic servant with whom they can share a laugh over alliteration in news articles. Sadly, thanks to out-of-control inflation in servant wages, most cannot afford that luxury, and must be satisfied with its depiction in Gasoline Alley, the old person’s comic of choice for extremely low-stakes chuckles.

Mary Worth, 12/4/22

OK, Iris, I know you’re very fixated on the physical similarities between you and Nan, but I think you do need to spend some time emotionally dealing with “yummy yummy yummy… for my tummy tummy tummy!” If you don’t nip this in the bud now, it absolutely will be part of your wedding vows.

Beetle Bailey, 12/4/22

Love the fact that, in his addled ramble around the house, General Halftrack managed to acquire a healthy pour of brown liquor. My man’s getting up there in years, but he’s still got it! (The “it” is of course a debilitating alcohol problem.)