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Mary Worth, 5/15/19

Oh hell yes this Mary Worth plot is going to get jazzed up by the introduction of a beloved character from the past, namely (I’m assuming) Terry Bryson! We first met Terry back in 2008, when she was brought onto the scene to explain to Toby exactly how badly she fucked up when she got her identity stolen online. Then, much more interestingly, in 2015, she got tracked down by her ex Adam, who was both her ex-crime-fighting partner and ex-lover. At first she was hesitant about renewing their relationship, but eventually they bonded over their shared love of jiu-jitsuing the shit out of ne’er-do-wells and then making out in front of them. Anyway, the point is that Mary is going to call this trained assassin out of retirement and she is going to track down Arther in his filthy hovel and eliminate him, because she is that serious about stopping cyberfraud. The doves in the first panel are an indication that the remainder of this storyline will be told in the style of famed Hong Kong director John Woo, which is to say extremely violently.

Gil Thorp, 5/15/19

Way back in 2005, earnest young feminists Hadley Baxendale and Steve Luhm fought to level the playing field between the He- and She-Mudlark teams, and it appears that the long moral arc of the universe has finally gotten itself fully bent, because I’m pretty sure the single panel of incomprehensible sports action that begins today’s Gil Thorp is the first we’ve heard of the boy’s baseball team this year, and we just as quickly turn back to the girls and their on-field winning ways and their “too cool for school” madness quickly spiraling out of control. Can you imagine how dull whatever the boys are getting up to must be for this business to be spring’s only plot?

Blondie, 5/15/19

You ever want to do a joke about how a tech thing makes some traditional scenario different for the kids today, but don’t follow through because you don’t actually know how people use the tech thing you want to joke about and don’t care to find out? Well, the popular and successful comic strip Blondie thinks you’re being a little too precious about it, my friend.

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Dick Tracy, 5/11/19

Oh hey, turns out I got bored with Dick Tracy’ Minit Mystery when it suddenly became be less about municipal politics and more about a leftist radical cop killer for hire (?) who killed a lady cop and that led to the local police apparatus violently cracking down on all local organized crime in civil rights violating ways, but now it turns out that, oops, the real cop killer was the lady cop’s husband! “Oops,” says Dick, “I was so obsessed with gangsters that I forgot that 55 percent of women in the U.S. are killed by intimate partners, which you’d think would be a stat at the top of your mind if you’re a person who solves murders for a living. Anyway, sorry about all the organized crime prosecutions we screwed up, by arresting a bunch of gangsters without warrants for no good reason.”

Gil Thorp, 5/11/19

Oh, hey, turns out that once the softball team got super into having interests outside of school, everyone wanted to get in on the “having outside interests” action, which they dubbed as “being too cool for school,” for some reason. Anyway, today’s the day when this relatively harmless trend pivots to becoming the ideological core of a revolutionary vanguard party!

Mark Trail, 5/11/19

Oh, hey, turns out that buzzing sound in Mark Trail was, as I predicted, bees. Bees, everyone! Ha ha, Mark is running away from a bunch of bees!

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Judger Parker, 5/4/19

I’m trying to remember exactly to what degree Sam and/or Abbey’s fingerprints would be on any aspect of the Great Norton Caper (in which, just to remind you, Judge Parker Emeritus helped April’s dad fake his death) that’s about to be revealed in a tell-all book, and honestly? I’m not sure that there are any! Which is great — for Sam. He can just quietly hang up the phone and then go back to planning how to charge the rubes $250 a night on AirBnB to stay in Marie’s old servant’s hovel ($175 if they just want to sleep in the horse barn), and start practicing saying “Judge Parker? Judge Parker? Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Mark Trail, 5/4/19

God bless Mark Trail for dedicating an entire day’s strip for establishing how theatrically sleepy all its characters are! The only one missing is JJ. I certainly hope come Monday he gets a whole strip to himself to stretch ostentatiously.

Gil Thorp, 5/4/19

Not gonna lie, folks: I personally relate to few people in the comics more than the guy in panel one, who tried to come up with something complimentary to say to a pretty, popular girl on the softball team and ended up blurting out “Way to … mash … the ball” as he awkwardly high-fives her in the hallway. He’s gonna be thinking about that for years to come.

Hi and Lois, 5/4/19

Hi, she’s … she’s right there, man

I’m pretty sure she can hear you

Not cool