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Mary Worth, 11/23/24

Big news everyone. Huge news. Incredible news. Mary is coming down with COVID or the flu or maybe just a bad cold, who’s to say, but the point is that she’s probably going to be too sick to do even the half-assed job of cooking Thanksgiving dinner that she promised to her friends some people she knows from her apartment building. Now, the heartwarming outcome will probably that the gang will come together to do Thanksgiving themselves the best they can and gather ’round her sickbed with their improvised feast, showing Mary how much she’s loved and appreciated, but let’s get real: these are the Westons and the Camerons we’re talking about, and Wilbur and Ian will absolutely be fist-fighting at PriceCo over the last frozen turkey, destroying said turkey and an entire endcap of cans of pumpkin pie filling in the process, while Mary lies on the couch at home, coughing up blood, forgotten and untended.

Hagar the Horrible, 11/23/24

Every time we’re reminded that Hagar’s son is named “Hamlet” I am tickled anew by the thought of Hagar being the analogue of the Ghost in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Still, the plot mechanics don’t really work — Hagar doesn’t have a brother that we know of, and as today’s strip reminds us, the intrafamilial threats he faces lie elsewhere — and frankly neither do the personalities. Hagar is a pretty happy-go-lucky guy, all things considered! Can you imagine him brooding around a castle, hounding his descendents with demands for vengeance? He’d probably just chalk up his death to “one of those things” and move onto Valhalla to see what exactly is going on there.

Flash Gordon, 11/23/24

As much as I love Flash Gordon’s current incarnation, I acknowledge that you’re never going to get a new incarnation of Flash Gordon if the people behind it aren’t a little more fascinated with old timey comics lore than is normal and healthy. This can spin terribly out of hand (see for instance basically every third Dick Tracy strip) but little bits of lore dispensed like easter eggs is all in good fun. For instance, did you know that Flash Gordon, canonically, went to Yale? That’s right. Flash Gordon, two-fisted spaceman, is an Ivy Leaguer — specifically, a Yale man. Depending on your personal prejudices, feel free to imagine that he had an Earthbound life as an irritating comp lit Marxist academic wannabe failson or a coke-addled finance bro failson before he had the good fortune to end up in space!

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Marvin and Hi and Lois, 8/24/24

Jeff … Hi … you morons. You idiots. You absolute fools. You’re already looking ahead to the passage of time, to the day when your kids have grown up and this phase of their life and yours is over forever, either with an anticipatory sense of nostalgia (Hi) or a frankly dickish mercenary sullenness (Jeff). But it will never happen. You’re stuck there, with these kids at the age they are, forever. It’s already been decades, but you can’t see it, can’t feel it, can’t know it. But it has been, and it will be. This is it. This is now. This is always now.

Mary Worth, 8/24/24

I guess Ed is cradling his new finacée firmly but gently in his arms to reestablish intimacy after their little dispute, but it really just looks like he’s physically restraining her from rushing to the table and adding yet another color-coded folder to her collection, this one for information on local DJs sorted by price and Yelp rating.

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Dennis the Menace, 6/8/24

“Dennis shit-talks his mother’s cooking” isn’t my favorite trope in this strip, but I feel you at least have to respect the form: he should either be poking sullenly at his food, glowering at everyone, absolutely ruining the energy of the family meal, or he should be making some witty quip that emotionally devastates Alice while Henry barely conceals a smirk. But while the dialogue here works, the art is all off: Dennis looks extremely pleased by the high-nutrition meal that’s been prepared for him, and his parents are all smiles. This frankly is so un-menacing that it loops all the way around to menacing again because it’s so deeply uncanny.

Judge Parker, 6/8/24

OK, since I’m embracing being a cranky old man who hates change, I’m just going to say it: “eloping” is supposed to mean that you sneak off and get married without telling any of your friends and family, often without even being formally engaged first. But more and more people are just using it to mean “We’re going have a small wedding, actually, even though we told some people we were planning to have a big one at some point in the future,” and I hate it! The secrecy is the point! You don’t just wander in and announce it while your fiancee is in the middle of a Zoom call with her mother!

Blondie, 6/8/24

YES IT CERTAINLY IS ANNOYING WHEN A CHILD SHOWS UP AT YOUR HOUSE AND EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE DOING OTHER STUFF YOU’RE EXPECTED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THEM