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Spider-Man, 8/14/18

Oh heck yes, Kingpin’s back! You might remember this beefy supervillain from his previous appearance in Newspaper Spider-Man, where he changed the face of evil scientific research techniques with his hit management guide, Faster! Work Faster! and then fled in an adorably tiny submarine as his evil scheme collapsed. Anyway, he’s joined forces with Golden Claw for a superstar teamup, and the techniques he’s learning as an equal partner in a criminal enterprise will inform his next book, Murder By Committee: How To Get Buy-In From All Stakeholders For Brutal Gangland Killings.

Dick Tracy, 8/14/18

You ever think about how silly Liz feels talking awkwardly into her wrist genie just sitting around police HQ, when there’s a perfectly good landline phone right there on her desk? Probably not half as silly as Dick feels having to fill out all the damn paperwork the liberals say he needs to deal with every time he kills someone, but Liz’s irritation is a lot more justified.

Blondie, 8/14/18

Man, I wish this were a Sunday strip so we could really get deep into those napping-related security questions, you know? Like, ten is actually quite a lot! I know this strip generally satisfies itself with goofy fake brand names so probably they’d start off just being about how much he loves SleepLyfe® Pillows or whatever, but I really want to get in to the contours of Dagwood’s dreamscape, and I feel like by question six or seven he’d have no choice but to get real and discuss why he prefers sleep’s temporary annihilation of self to spending time with his friends and family.

Gil Thorp, 8/14/18

So it turns out that this year instead of doing a wacky summer storyline, Gil Thorp is doing a storyline about Gil doing some golf coaching. It also turns out that the only thing duller than watching other people play golf is watching someone explain to other people how to play golf.

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Spider-Man, 8/6/18

Actually, there’s a wide variety of apps out there that can help you learn a second language on your own — Duolingo’s the most popular, but it’s an area where there’s a whole lot of competition. Of course, if you live in an predominantly immigrant neighborhood where you still speak your native tongue on an everyday basis and don’t have much chance to practice the language you’re learning on an everyday basis, you might come off a little stilted; still, you have to admit that, while Claw sometimes chooses a big word where a small one will do, any English-speaker will be able to understand him easily. How’s your Cantonese, anyway, Peter?

Family Circus, 8/6/18

About 10 years ago, I watching the Wizard of Oz with my niece, who was about 8 or 9 at the time, and in the very first scene that takes place in Oz, she said, “Look, Uncle Josh, you can tell they filmed this inside” — and it’s true! It’s really quite obvious it’s on a set. I had a sad moment of thinking “oh no, the kids today are too media savvy to enjoy this movie,” but then she followed up with “–and that’s how you know this is a magical land that they’re in!” It really warmed my heart that she had actually constructed this elaborate theory of the film’s visual semiotics that allowed her enjoy it all the more. Another generation was still going to find itself enraptured by this wonderful movie! Anyway, like I said, that was a decade ago, and all I can say seeing this panel is: welp, we had a good run.

Gil Thorp, 8/6/18

“They’re sure a lot more pleasant than the public school kids I spend most of my time with! Those priests are still allowed to beat some respect into them, I guess.”

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Mary Worth, 7/30/18

Oh, huh, so it seems that Tommy’s jailhouse conversion was specifically to Roman Catholicism, interesting! You can understand why he finds it an attractive faith, seeing as he seems to have wildly misunderstood the purpose of the sacrament of confession; apparently he thinks that if there’s something you should probably tell somebody in your life, admitting it in the confessional instead is functionally the same thing! I feel bad for this priest, who’s probably had to hear the tales of Tommy’s meth-dealing days, like, five times by now.

Gil Thorp, 7/30/18

Finally, the “spring” baseball plot is over, and now we have just a few short weeks for a wacky summertime storyline! Clearly it’s not enough time to top such classics as “Kaz gets a job as a rock star’s bodyguard” or “Marty Moon gets grifted at golf” or “Gil does a pro wrestling match for charity,” but it seems to involve the local kids getting into the latest extreme sports craze, RainCycling, so I’m excited to see where it goes.

Gasoline Alley, 7/30/18

Like many characters of color working as servants in fiction, Gertie has a sassy personality and not much of an inner life to which we’re privy. Today, though, we learn a little bit of how she passes her time in her off hours: with lots and lots of Wookiee porn.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/30/18

REX MORGAN, M.D., PRESENTS: TWO-FISTED TALES OF GETTING TO THE AIRPORT ON TIME