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Gil Thorp, 1/23/23

Maybe I’m going to get pushback for this by people who are and/or know actual teens, but my take on vaping, setting aside for the moment its purpose as a drug delivery system, is that it’s one of the dorkiest things I encounter in the real world on a regular basis. You’re sucking cotton-candy flavored mist out of an object that looks either like a tiny alto saxophone or something that would’ve been called a “deathstick” in a bad late ’90s cyberpunk movie. Not that a teen should take lessons on being cool from me, a 48-year-old man who blogs about comic strips, but it’s just sad that the Magic the Gathering nerds have internalized that vaping is too cool for them. To be fair, Nick refuses to buy into this dichotomy either, and is happy to share his cool guy vaping bounty with them. Nick seems like an all right dude, to be honest, maintaining his generosity despite the nerds’ rudeness!

Slylock Fox, 1/23/23

For some reason I assumed that the answer to “which way” was going to be a cardinal direction and I was about to pen a screed about how the liberal coastal elitists at Slylock Fox have constructed a mystery where you have to know about the relative locations of the zoo and lake in Central Park. But it turns out the answer relies on knowing which side of the bus the doors are on, and as a transit nerd I’m down with this one.

Honestly, the biggest story here is not Harry Ape robbing yet another bank, but the continued existence of a zoo in a post-animalpocalypse world. I suppose the animals could maintain it with empty cages and habitats as a monument to their former enslavement, but there are other possibilities, and they’re all much darker.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/23/23

You know, for someone who’s dirt poor and also doesn’t really seem to care about living a healthy lifestyle, Snuffy sure visits the doctor a lot! And it occurred to me, looking at this strip, that we often see him in that situation with his shirt off and the top half of his overalls unbuckled, which (a) indicates that a decent amount of thought went into the question of “Given how Snuffy canonically dresses, what would it look like if he had to disrobe?” and (b) is really a blessing, considering how much further they could’ve gone with it.

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Gil Thorp, 1/20/23

So earlier this week, two Mudlarks were griping that they’d never raise enough money to save the athletics department with their typical dollar candy bar fundraiser, and maybe they should sell vapes! Ha ha, it was a funny joke, everybody laughed … except, nope, here they are actually selling vape cartridges to innocent punk rockers who quite frankly look a billion times cooler than these two dorks? This is of course extremely funny, and even funnier if they dutifully hand this dirty vape money over to Gil and the school, rather than doing what most people do with cash made from illegal activities, which is keep it for themselves.

Dick Tracy, 1/20/23

Oh, sorry, my mistake, the art forger guy only got spear-gunned to death in Panama City, but his corpse drifted over to Cuba and into Wunbrow’s jurisdiction, it seems like. Anyway, Chandler’s face got all fucked up from water damage and maybe getting partially eaten by a shark or something, but Wunbrow isn’t going to let us see it, because he’s a dirty Communist.

Pluggers, 1/20/23

WOMEN, always wanting you to LISTEN TO and then REMEMBER what they say, amiright fellas

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Gil Thorp, 1/18/23

You might not know it based on his lackluster coaching record, but Gil is capable of shrewdly planning ahead. He’s facing an abrupt firing if he fails to deliver a basketball championship, and he surely won’t get that sweet, sweet endorsement money he’s been too good chase after once that happens, which is why he needs to establish his new “Gilpa” persona now, while he’s still a draw. Hopefully by the time he’s fired, fans of the Fox Used Auto Extended Universe will have come to accept him as one of their many beloved characters and he can keep getting paid work.

Gasoline Alley, 1/18/23

Not sure I fully understand the theological world-building that underpins Gasoline Alley. In this universe, Santa is an immortal gift-giver who takes post-Christmas vacations and runs his operation like a modern businessman, but is also (see the halo) Nicholas of Myra, a 4th century Greek bishop who has ascended to sainthood and can intercede with God to protect the lives of mortals, a category that apparently includes non-human elves. Did Jesus also die to save elfkind in the GasAlliverse, or did they have their own Savior? Really hope we’re going to explore all this rather than waste time on Bunky’s inevitably failed business venture.

Dennis the Menace, 1/18/23

I was an extremely dorky child and teen, as evidenced by the fact that my big teenage rebellion consisted of skipping school a couple times a month so I could go by myself to the downtown library and read. But in my opinion, even that’s more menacing than doing it to spend quality time with a kindly old neighbor lady.

Blondie, 1/18/23

J.C. Dithers doesn’t seem like the most tech-savvy guy, but I certainly would hope that DithersCo’s IT department can set up web filtering software to prevent their employees from wasting entire afternoons writing intensely erotic roastfucking fanfic on AO3.