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Hi and Lois, 1/29/22

Man, all the facial expressions in that last panel are great: Hi and Lois, desperate to salvage whatever joy they can from their planned date night; the maître d’, furious because this is not, in fact, how reservations work; the twins, deeply suspicious of any meal that isn’t buttered noodles at room temperature, just the way they like them. But most heartbreaking of all is Trixie, who is absolutely beaming, presumably because for once her family has decided to not just leave her crawling unattended on the floor for the day but are actually including her in their activities.

Gil Thorp, 1/29/22

The non-gambling spring Gil Thorp plot involves the girl’s basketball team captain figuring out how to be a leader, and possibly it’s just by berating teammates with questions about their bodies? She recently got into the Air Force Academy, so this is going to have to do with her future as an officer, maybe? Anyway, it’s so boring that the Kellogg Company has refused to allow the Pop-Tarts® brand to be associated with it.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/29/22

Look, I don’t want to just throw around terms like “incitement to genocide,” but I am saying that any flatlander communities immediately downhill from Hootin’ Holler should be wary of “Sterilizin’ Exp’dishuns” being sent out as this kind of rhetoric escalates.

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Mary Worth, 1/24/22

It’s definitely an interesting choice to show Wilbur’s loved ones sobbing over his death after we’ve already been shown that he’s not only very much alive but is almost certainly at this exact moment enjoying another round of yummy margaritas on a private resort island somewhere. This pushes this whole scene out of the realm of heartfelt drama into that of farcical melodrama, which frankly is a more comfortable mode to engage with Mary Worth in, for me anyway. Speaking of melodrama, you have to respect that Mary knows better than to blurt “the sea has probably claimed him” out loud, not so much because of the fatalism but because it’s extremely overwrought.

Dick Tracy, 1/24/22

Wow, I guess, the Neo-Chicago police force is “woke” now, giving officers who have been involved in an officer-involved immolation paid time off to be “in their feelings” and experience “trauma-informed self care” or whatever the kids say these days. Still, it’s nice to see that Dick has a little time to pursue some his hobbies, like eating hamburgers semi-shirtless and wandering around the woods looking for goo that used to be some guy who blew up.

Gil Thorp, 1/24/22

A guy I knew who ran a winery told me that, during Prohibition, some vineyards survived by mailing people grape juice and various other wine-making ingredients along with a note that said “Whatever you do, do not follow these very detailed instructions that we’re about to give to you, because if you do you’ll have made wine and that would be illegal.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot during this Gil Thorp teen gambling plot, where the theoretical teens who are the audience for this strip are simultaneously being set up for a heavy-handed plot where a gambling teen suffers for his gambling ways but also being educated in the mechanics of all the fun and exciting bets they can place on online betting apps that are free and easy to download!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/24/22

Ironically, this page from Sarah’s diary would become the key exhibit in the plagarism lawsuit filed against her father by the heirs of E.C. Segar.

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Mary Worth, 1/5/22

I think we were all ready to read the end-of-year Mary Worth lull as representing an at least temporary shift away from Wilbur’s romantic antics, and thought that maybe we’d catch up with Ian and Toby or Dr. Jeff or, heck, maybe even some new one-off characters Mary can meddle with, which is the sort of plot that used to be the bread and butter of this strip! Thus our abrupt return to Wilbur/Estelle On The High Seas in this first week of January has taken me by surprise, and I also wouldn’t have guessed that it we would get so quickly into daily recap territory, but look, you can’t have Wilbur angrily declaring that he’s going to storm off in the wake of his wildly ill-advised marriage proposal and sleep … on the buffet? in the boiler room? in steerage with all the colorful Irish peasants from Titanic? … and expect me not to talk about it.

Gil Thorp, 1/5/22/

Oh, snap, is gambling-mad Pranit betting on games that he’s playing in? No, he’s just using gambling lingo metaphorically, but sadly Milford High has spent years slashing its humanities budget to fund its STEM program and bloated athletic department, so nobody he’s talking to understands what “metaphors” are.