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Six Chix, 1/18/18

I feel like I need to apologize, because this comic is basically pretty terrible, but I also kind of love it??? Like, I can’t parse its internal logic at all — clearly the “contgratulations, it’s a” balloon is a take off of the gender-denoting balloons for parents of infants we know and love, so did they give birth to this obnoxious teen, or did he spring forth self-living from one of their foreheads, or did he come in the mail, or what — but I still love his grinning, obnoxious teen face. “Hey guys!” he seems to be saying. “Guess what! I’m here, and I suck.”

Mary Worth, 1/18/18

I don’t have kids myself, so probably I don’t get to weigh in on this, but just because your child loves you, maybe that isn’t in and of itself a sign that you’re a good parent? Maybe another sign of good parenting would be if she goes through an emotional trauma and confides in you rather than just never mentioning it, I dunno. Anyway, even Wilbur’s theoretical sticker is baffling, since (a) “sticker” makes it sound like a bumper sticker, but apparently he’s imagining that he’d “wear” it, and (b) “How are my parenting skills?” gives way too much leeway to your interlocutor to just start telling you their opinions. If you’re just looking for a conversation starter that’ll let you boast, try “Ask me about my parenting skills!” But if you’re asking me about your parenting skills, well, this blog is already on the record with some opinions.

Rex Morgan, 1/18/18

So, it turns out the Morgans’ schlubby-ass lawyer is in fact trying to bring together the battling parties to reach a compromise that leaves everyone feeling like they had some of their needs met, instead of just spending as much energy as possible destroying his clients’ enemies financially and emotionally. As panel three makes very clear, this won’t do at all.

Spider-Man, 1/18/18

Oh, uh, it turns out getting an infusion of Hulk blood doesn’t turn Doctor Connors into a Hulk, it turns him into the Lizard, which is kind of weird because it was some other serum that turned him into the Lizard in the first place. Like when multiple different things injected into your body all turn you into the Lizard, maybe the problem isn’t the things being injected into you, maybe the problem is you, you know what I’m saying? Also, I assumed that the whole Lizard situation was a “human transformed into dumb rampaging beast against his will” deal, but now that I know the Lizard can talk, and use his powers of speech to talk about himself in the third person, I have significantly less sympathy for him.

Family Circus, 1/18/18

I am immediately intrigued by the idea of child-proof pants, but I have to imagine there’s a real cost-benefit analysis you have to run with them. Is the danger of Jeffy soiling himself outweighed by the danger of Jeffy exposing himself?

Gil Thorp, 1/18/18

“WOW THESE ISLAND PEOPLE GET ALL THE FREE HAMBURGERS AND BACKUP VARSITY SLOTS THEY WANT JUST BECAUSE THEY GOT SLIGHTLY HURRICANED, IT DOESN’T SEEM FAIR, DOES IT” –the syndicated newspaper comic strip Gil Thorp, I guess????

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Gil Thorp, 1/15/18

It’s time for a new storyline in Gil Thorp, the strip about high school sports that isn’t afraid to get topical, the strip that was doing storylines about DREAMers way back in 2008, the strip that has the guts to say that head injuries are bad but football is great. Looks like this spring we’re going to be spending time with a couple refugees from Hurricane Maria, one of whom has a real bad attitude about her homeland’s devastation, unlike her brother who’s just a real chill guy. Will all their problems be solved with high school sports? Probably!

Funky Winkerbean, 1/15/18

God, imagine a future dystopia where humanity has ceded its autonomy to a soulless, implacable “machine” — a machine that, for instance, can tell when you’re using the photocopier at work to xerox copies of your new terrible graphic novel about your dead wife so you can personally hand them to your friends who keep saying “the attachment didn’t come through on that email you sent.” Well, you don’t have to imagine it, because it’s here. Welcome to hell, where death by cancer is a blessed relief.

Family Circus, 1/15/18

I know Billy is supposed to be making snow angels in the background, but I’d really like to believe he’s just flailing around out there, rubbing his gross little body all over the lawn, to claim the snow. “It’s my snow, asshole!” he gleefully yells at Jeffy. “You can’t have it!”

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Spider-Man, 1/3/18

Oh, hey, I didn’t really discuss what happened in Newspaper Spider-Man while I was gone, did I? Well, it turns out that Dr. Connors lost a lot of blood due to that gator bite, and also that the whole reason Bruce Banner was in town the swamp in the first place was because he and Dr. Connors have the same rare blood type and Bruce was looking to do some kind of blood exchange thing to de-Hulk himself, but now maybe the transfusion is going to go the other way, which would be bad news for a guy who already has a problem with turning into a large, violent green thing? Also, Peter Parker revealed his secret identity to Bruce Banner, which was a shocking development to everyone who had taken for granted that he didn’t already know about this in the Newspaper Spider-Man continuity, which is to say nobody. Anyway, none of this is as important as panel two here, in which Spider-Man uses his famous and beloved jumping power (the relative jumping of a spider) to leap from boat to dock. I expect to see several more days of him hopping through the marina area, until he finally gets to an area with tall buildings where he can web-sling through, at which point he’ll raise up a hand to shoot a web and accidentally drop Dr. Connors’ head onto the pavement.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/3/18

Look, I get that this is a side-splittingly hilarious visual gag. But was it worth the terrible disruption to nearly a century of accumulated Barney Google and Snuffy Smith lore? Are we just supposed to [sarcastic nerd chuckle] believe that Elviney has had this [increasingly angry sarcastic nerd chuckle] [finger quotes] “twin sister” all along? Obviously if she lived in the tiny community of Hootin’ Holler we’d have met her by now, but just as obviously if she were visiting from another holler Elviney would have said as much, ugh, I’m starting a petition to get this strip stricken from the canon

Gil Thorp, 1/3/18

Notice how all the panes seem to vanish from Gil’s surprisingly large office window at some point between panels one and three? That’s because right around the middle of panel two is where Gil allows himself to indulge his usual middle-of-a-Marty-Moon-interview fantasy: that he could just lean back in his chair and tumble out into the welcoming arms of the forest below.