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Family Circus, 5/22/22

There’s “I increasingly find Pluggers relatable” old and then there’s “I unironically find the Family Circus funny” old, but I have to say, I unironically find today’s Family Circus funny. The punchline is good, of course, but I also enjoy how sad Billy looks. You’ve ruined his day, Big Daddy Keane! I was going to say that it’s OK for me to enjoy this Family Circus because of how mean it is, but maybe that’s why all the old people have always liked it. All those kindly grandmas cutting out the panels and hanging them on their fridge thinking, “That’s right, Billy, you’re an ignorant little shit, just like my daughter’s eldest.”

The Lockhorns, 5/22/22

I have, of course, been on Team Enjoying The Lockhorns Unironically since my youth, and I deeply respect that rather than phoning in Sundays with a single giant panel the creators instead deliver five separate individual weekday-equivalent panels, each with its own gag. This collection, like most Sunday groups, consists mostly of bangers: top right and lower left are the weakest but even these are passable wordplay; top left shows an actual awareness of how a newfangled social media thing works; middle is a moodily drawn glimpse into a sadly disordered mind; and bottom right is a great visual gag. At least there’s some consistency in this crazy, topsy turvy world, and it’s how much Leroy and Loretta hate each other.

Gasoline Alley, 5/22/22

Oh, has that all been too much sweetness and light for you? Fine: I will never say a kind word about Gasoline Alley. Never, do you hear me? Today’s strip features two senile old men talking nonsense to each other and neither of them can remember whether they’ve said it or heard it before, and is thus a perfect metaphor for the experience of reading the comic strip Gasoline Alley.

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Gasoline Alley, 5/1/22

I gotta say, this Gasoline Alley was a real journey for me, in the sense that the opening title led me to hope that, finally, Rufus and Joel, my least favorite characters out of a cast in which I don’t like anybody, would be horribly murdered by some kind of undead fiend who drained their bodies of blood, but then it turns out to be some kind of weird meta-thing involving people and details I refuse to research further. On the bright side, though, we do get pretty solid confirmation at the end that our rustic duo are thoroughly illiterate.

Blondie, 5/1/22

Look, if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when comics stretch out what could’ve been been a weekday strip to fill the Sunday panels and trash all their world-building and continuity in the process. What I’m saying is that Dagwood has exactly one friend, and it’s Herb, and they don’t even like each other. I have no idea who these other two people are. I assume they’re Dagwood’s neighbors whom he vaguely knows, and they’re being a lot more polite about this than I would be.

Mary Worth, 5/1/22

Mary Worth, on the other hand, often does a pretty good job of doing a Sunday strip that’s mostly a recap of the week’s plot but contains one little detail that rewards you for reading it in addition to the dailies. Today, that detail is Ian’s little note in the fourth panel. Ian is 100% a guy who would have an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student that was destined to leave her emotionally fucked up for decades and then write “with much affection” in her yearbook.

Pluggers, 5/1/22

Hey, look, buddy, the point of Pluggers is to use furries to illustrate down-home real American anecdotes that manage to be self-deprecating and smug at the same time, OK? It is not a venue for working out your extremely petty and very specific marital grievances, do better everybody

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Gil Thorp, 4/12/22

Can’t believe it’s taken the Milford student-athlete body this long to figure out Coach Thorp’s main weaknesses: he isn’t very smart, and he doesn’t pay a lot of attention to any of his specific individual coachees. If you can trick him into forming a positive opinion of you during a ritual reciting of the names, you’ve got a real leg up!

Gasoline Alley, 4/12/22

Dick Tracy and Gasoline Alley are both syndicated by Tribune Publishing, and with everyone trying to exploit in-house IP to the max these days, it should come as no surprise to see innovative experiments in crossover content synergy like this week’s rapidly escalating Dick Tracy porno. Tribune also owns Gil Thorp, so don’t be surprised to see another special erotic guest star by the end of the week.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/12/22

Ha ha, it’s funny because … poor public health infrastructure has resulted in Hootin’ Holler being ravaged by infectious disease? And it’s hit the children the hardest? That’s the punchline?