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Gil Thorp, 2/26/22

The thing about Gil Thorp and its teenage hijinks is that they do occur in the very restricted world of the newspaper comics section, which means that the black-market Adderall the characters buy needs to be fake, their “sexting” photos need to be fully clothed, and their backyard wrestling deaths need to be accidental. Still, I would have liked at least a panel or two of ambiguity before finding out that Pranit’s attempt to solve his cash-flow problems with hired violence instantly blew up in his face.

Gasoline Alley, 2/26/22

Gasoline Alley is doing this long shaggy dog story about how Walt was on an adventure in Egypt decades ago and ended up in a Pharaoh’s tomb and drank something, and I feel like we finally have an explanation of what’s going on with him, which is that he’s under a mummy’s curse. Which make sense, as he’s increasingly mummy-like himself.

Mary Worth, 2/26/22

Cal, I get it, Toby’s an attractive woman, and a student-teacher romance has a forbidden allure. But you don’t have to debase yourself by claiming that you think Toby’s hideous grey figurines look “playful.” Try to have a little dignity, man.

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Mary Worth, 2/14/22

Toby story confirmed! Toby story about her working as a community college art teacher confirmed! I am very excited about the delights in store for us — do Toby’s students respect her? I feel fairly confident that they do not, and I dearly hope that the Etsy store where she sells her terrible figurines was discovered by everyone in her class by the end of the first week.

Blondie, 2/14/22

I dunno, man, I realize there’s a tradition of giving your romantic partner, like, sexy underwear for Valentine’s Day, but I feel like “Here’s something that feeds into my very specific fetish and it’s my Valentine’s gift to you” doesn’t seem quite right. I mean, I guess it’s working for these two crazy kids though? Sorry, Cookie and Alexander! Sorry they’re doing it right there in the living room!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/14/22

“My mistake. The thing is, I don’t want to talk to you, but if I had realized that my choices were either talking to you in person or talking to you on the phone, I definitely would’ve picked the phone.”

Gasoline Alley, 2/14/22

“We will celebrate it together, my dear! Have you seen my dad? That’s our future! We’re going to live forever, growing more wizened and aged, but never dying! We’re trapped in an eternal hell!”

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Gasoline Alley, 2/1/22

Folks, for a long time I’ve been trying to ignore the fact that there’s a movie coming out called Gasoline Alley. As near as I can tell, it has literally zero connection to the comic strip, as its Wikipedia entry informs me its tagline is “Justice Gets Dirty” and it stars Bruce Willis as “Freeman,” Luke Wilson “Vargas,” and “Devon Sawa” as “Jimmy Jayne,” none of that tracking to our beloved comic strip, which is about [thinks long and hard about what you might describe Gasoline Alley, the comic strip, as being “about”] scrapbooking. Anyhoo, I don’t have the energy to do any research on copyright law, but since Gasoline Alley is 103 years old, I’m going to guess that the title, at least, is now in the public domain, and so all the strip can do in revenge for a movie with the lesser-known Wilson brother and “Devon Sawa” in it stealing its name is put out a long, rambling shaggy dog plot involving these two Hollywood producers that will ultimately go absolutely nowhere.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/1/22

I honestly couldn’t tell you what Mother Goose and Grimm is “about” either, but up until today I would’ve been very sure that what it wasn’t about was the seething, unrequited lust its elderly bird-person characters had for one another. You learn something new every day, in the funny pages!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/1/22

One of the great mysteries of Snuffy Smith: how old is Snuffy Smith, exactly? On the one hand, he and Loweezy are young enough to have an infant son; on the other, as we learned today, Snuffy is entirely toothless. I guess it’s possible that, at some point when Snuffy was in his late 20s or early 30s, Doc Pritchart found a rotten tooth or two and decided just to pull them all to “get ahead of the game.”

Dennis the Menace, 2/1/22

“We live in a degraded, fallen world, Mr. Wilson! Don’t bother getting dressed up for it, they’re just going to put you on TikTok and then do a cancel culture on ya.”