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Gil Thorp, 10/4/22

Oh, isn’t that nice, the Thorps are being hosted by Kaz and his girlfriend [record scratch] Rachel????? Huge news! Kaz had been dating Kelly since at least 2007 and the two of them were still doing Christmas cards together in 2020. But they were always something of a mismatched pair, what with Kelly’s highbrow interest in indie music and foreign cinema. Maybe that’s what drove them apart, or maybe the pandemic finally finished what the internet started and Kelly had to close down her travel agency and flee town to escape her creditors. But obviously a hunk like Kaz isn’t going to stay single for long, and he and Rachel really got to spend a lot of time “sheltering in place” during the quarantine [wink wink wink].

Mary Worth, 10/4/22

Oh wow it turns out Zak’s favorite childhood dish was actually prepared for him not by his family but by his babysitter? Who maybe, it turns out, was the one who really raised him? This probably won’t be discovered to have anything to do with his taste in significantly older romantic partners, at all!

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Mary Worth, 10/3/22

Ahh, after a little stalling, it’s a new Mary Worth plot, and it looks like we’re finally going to see the magic that makes the unstoppable Iris-Zak love story work. So far we have “Iris hangs on Zak’s every word and lavishes him with attention to try to make him happy” and “Zak has whole conversation with Iris that he just forgets, probably because it’s more efficient to use that brain space for coming up with new apps.” Sounds promising!

Dennis the Menace, 10/3/22

Dennis’s blank, uncomprehending look, combined with Alice’s sly smile, has completely upended the meaning of Dennis the Menace for me: it’s actually a Munchausen syndrome by proxy situation, but for menacing. Who do you think is carefully feeding Dennis all those rude things he “accidentally” blurts out in front of the party guests? Truly chilling stuff.

Dick Tracy, 10/3/22

This lady at the bar is all of us. She just wants to see something unbelievable, or at least interesting, but instead she gets caught up in an internecine feud between mutant criminal lowlife types. This is why more and more people are abandoning the bar scene for dating apps!

Slylock Fox, 10/3/22

We’ve seen this mystery before, but the text has gotten a substantial upgrade: instead of pretending to eat boring old beef broth, Count Weirdly is eating a piping hot bowl of cream of mushroom soup, which I think we can all agree is much funnier. I’m tempted to go commit some crimes just so I can say to the cops “But officers! I couldn’t possibly have done any of that, because I’ve been here all this time, eating this bowl of delicious cream of mushroom soup!” I would probably end up spending years in prison, but it would be worth it.

Gil Thorp, 10/3/22

Wait, I’m sorry, Coach Kaz’s dojo is a penthouse apartment? We always knew that high school sports were the backbone of Milford’s self-image, but I don’t think we quite understood how well even the assistant coaches were paid. Anyway, Keri, watch out for that bowl of green stuff, it’s mostly pork.

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Daddy Daze, 9/27/22

The lure of doing a comic strip about a baby is eternal, but of course each generation will do their own particular version reflecting their ethos, worldview, and material conditions; and the fact that a syndicated comic strip is essentially a lifelong sinecure lets us contrast the varying generational attitudes directly against one another. Take Marvin, for instance: launched in 1982, as the Baby Boom generation was coming into its own and America was shaking off its post-Vietnam malaise, its title character represents the bold and unapologetic national attitude of the era: yes, Marvin shits and pisses himself constantly, and no he won’t apologize for it or learn how to stop. It’s someone else’s problem and the thought of them dealing with it makes him smile!

The Daddy Daze baby, on the other hand, is a creature of our current neurotic age. Like Marvin, he is unable to prevent himself from befouling his diaper several times a day, but his usual gleeful mania is actually just a pose, masking a deep, gnawing anxiety about all the pooping and the peeing. He knows he’s disgusting and he desperately wants to learn to use a toilet, but also knows that, as a baby in a syndicated comic strip, he’s never going to reach that promised land and well just be stewing in his own waste for all eternity.

Gasoline Alley, 9/27/22

Say what you will about Gasoline Alley, and lord knows I’ve said a lot, but it remains a piece of true outsider art that’s somehow pumped into the reading lists of surviving loyal newspaper readers across the English-speaking world. Can you imagine tricking major publishers into printing the sentence “Blimey, my red sock has entangled itself betwixt the keys and rendered me immobile for the moment” in thousands of newspapers as some sort of avant-garde action, or maybe as a prank? Of course not, and yet everyone involved in the process that produced this strip thinks it’s normal, wholesome fun. No, I am absolutely not going to explain what’s happening here, by the way, you don’t need to know and don’t particularly want to, trust me.

Gil Thorp, 9/27/22

No! No! We cannot lose Coach Kaz! I don’t care if the Time Corps has recruited him as an agent in our nation’s shadowy war against those who would alter the space-time continuum — we need his antics in Milford!

Funky Winkerbean, 9/27/22

My immediate reaction to the first panel of this strip is that Jessica wanted Darrin to somehow make the gun that Plantman used to murder her father into a plaything for their son. But then, based on everyone’s facial expressions, by the end of the strip I decided she actually wanted it made into some sort of sex toy. I’m not well, but in my defense, neither is Funky Winkerbean.