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Slylock Fox, 9/7/22 (panel)

Well, you could find all the S-words. Alternatively, you could assign names beginning with the letter S to all the elements: Siamese, sycamore, stratus, sun, starling, shack: try it!

Slylock‘s original premise seems rooted in the ancient gnostic belief that knowing the “true names” of things and beings confers power over them. You could give that a try, too, and maybe acquire godlike power over the stuff in today’s episode of Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids. For which, congratulations, I guess.

Gil Thorp, 9/7/22

Wow, the plot developments in the new Gil Thorp are coming thick and fast. Here we learn that the Thorps’ impending divorce has less to do with Gil’s roving eye or frequent absences and more with Mimi’s long-suppressed LPGA dreams. Which I could really get into, except Mimi’s Mom is wearing Gil’s face and it’s creeping me out.

Luann, 9/7/22

It’s an iron law in comics that nothing must ever change. Calvin and Dennis must stay five forever; Marvin never leave his diaper; Charlie Brown never grow up. When a cartoonist slips up in the name of “progress” or “development,” all hell breaks loose. Characters in real-time strips like For Better or for Worse or Gasoline Alley age out of their cute zones into boring adults or, eventually, horrifying rattletraps like century-and-change Walt Wallet. The famous time-skip in Funky Winkerbean tried to shift focus to sons and daughters, failed, and went back to its increasingly creaky main cast.

So it is with Luann‘s post-graduation stories. A few characters got cashiered outright: Knute, Crystal, Mr. Fogarty. But with some obvious substitutions—ethnic ciphers Dez and Bets for ethnic ciphers Delta and Rosa—the cast and plots are the same, except for Tiffany here. She literally grew out of her “shallow, pretty cheerleader” role when she gained weight “dealing with depression” in 2017. So, in classic Darwinian fashion, here comes Stef to occupy her niche. The strip is now working hard to throw her a lifeline with a “poor little rich girl” role. Hold onto it, Tiff—hold on for dear life. The shadow of Walt Wallet looms large.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/7/22

Buck! Buck! All is forgiven! Come back Buck, please! Buuuuuuuuuuuuck!

–Uncle Lumpy

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Dennis the Menace, 9/3/22

“Kid, did you somehow forget I’m married to Alice Mitchell? Go bother Dagwood or something.”

Menace level: pwned!

Crankshaft, 9/3/22

Hannah is smiling because she’s going to follow her boss’s instructions exactly and compress eleven years of 26 30-minute episodes each into a single 4GB MP4. Channel One viewers will be treated to 143 hours of nine flickering gray squares, accompanied by tiny squeaks every half hour or so. Sure beats the original John Darling Show!

Gil Thorp, 9/3/22

Welcome to Oreintation for the Milford School of Mines. The crew team’s Oarintation is across the hall.

With Funky and now Gil, the comics seem to be introducing their trans characters in alphabetic order; this puts Hägar‘s Hamlet (→ Ophelia, obv.) up next, followed by Dot and Ditto from Hi and Lois (they could just switch). Meanwhile, Tobias, welcome to Milford Football: what’ll it be, fullback or defensive tackle?

Lockhorns, 9/3/22

Leroy’s gut blocks the strike zone, so whether walked or hit by a pitched ball, he always reaches first. He celebrates because walks don’t hurt as much.

–Uncle Lumpy

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Omigosh, it’s the last day of the 2022 Comics Curmudgeon Summer Fundraiser! Hurry!

Dick Tracy, 9/2/22

Moon citizens have no choice whether or not to live under fascism, but they do get to pick their preferred flavor. Enjoy the wholesale militarization of society in service of external conquest? Line up behind Ro-Zan over there! Prefer the quiet suffocation of human rights under an all-powerful domestic security state? Team Thorin for you!

No matter to Dick: he’s just a cop, you guys do the executions! After all, “He who wins the war writes the history.” Or maybe, “History is written by the victors?” Dick doesn’t care; he’s just a cop: leave the quotation-mangling to Mary Worth.

Gil Thorp, 9/2/22

Speaking of mangling, remember when Gil Thorp was famous for bizarre jump-cuts between panels? No more! Now the unsettling breaks come within the panels themselves. Consider Panel 1—”They got coffee for us” : “Shouldn’t we get coffee?” : [“Uh, yeah Dad, that’s why they got it?”]. Or take Panel 2’s confusion of sarcasm with trolling. Trolling would be, “You’re bringing that nose-wart into my high school?” Panel 3 is just routine recruitment of your kid as a divorce-ally; I’ll permit it.

Mary Worth, 9/2/22

Say, it’s been over a week; let’s drop in on Jared and Jess! Guilt no longer lives in his heart! Apparently it leads to suffering or something, not sure if I’ve got that quite right? Anyway, Jess, now that Jared has discovered the joys of dumping people, guess what? No bad blood though, OK? Hate that stuff, we do.

Just a reminder that there are no Comment of the Week posts on my watch. Josh will be back Sept. 10^th; take it up with him!

–Uncle Lumpy