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Blondie, 11/24/20

I genuinely enjoy the range of human facial expressions on display in the final panel here. Glasses Guy is interested, very interested, Token Carpool Lady is just beginning to shift from being intrigued to being disturbed, and Herb is miserable, absolutely miserable. Not sure what any of those emotions have to do with Dagwood’s gluttony, which should be entirely unsurprising to any of them, but I enjoy them nevertheless.

Dustin, 11/24/20

You can say a lot about Dustin’s retrograde cultural politics, and lord knows I have, but if you squint at it, it’s at least kind of progressive that they gave the self-loathing-dieting-verging-towards-eating-disorder to the dad character and not the mom. Anyway, I really like the last panel in today’s strip. He’s not even enjoying the donuts anymore, but he’s going to keep eating them anyway, presumably in a stubborn attempt to prove something to somebody.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/24/20

I’m also digging Sarah’s facial expression in panel two today. It’s clear she’s visualizing something like a digital anal thermometer that connects to your computer via Bluetooth, which the Morgan clinic will be happy to set you up with an installment plan for.

Gil Thorp, 11/24/20

Ah ha, finally we have the big fun moment in any Gil Thorp storyline, where the season’s two big plots are mashed awkwardly together. This football season those two plots are “Newcomer Corina Karenna is sexual catnip” and “two Mudlark QBs are duking it out for the top spot,” and the way they’re combining them is by having both boys come over to Corina’s house and engage in hand-to-hand combat, for … the starting QB job? Corinna’s affections? Doesn’t really matter, the important question is how oiled up they’re going to be while they do it.

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Dick Tracy, 11/11/20

I gotta tell you, I’ve been extremely uninterested in this Dick Tracy plot so far, which has involved … poison gas? A couple new weirdo criminals (“Daisy” and “Yeti”) whose gimmicks don’t really seem to sync up? Enh. But I am a fickle Comics Curmudgeon, faithful readers, and everything about today’s strip delights me. The sudden pivot to meteorite theft? The idea that there’s some kind of lucrative black market for meteorites out there? The managing editor at the The Daily deciding that there should be a front page banner headline about a new meteorite exhibit at the museum, and that the approximate dollar value of the meteorite is the most important thing to emphasize in said banner headline? The gratuitious slam on Daisy’s literacy? It’s all perfect and delightful, and I hope for more of this and less of the stuff that I already can’t really remember very clearly and cannot be bothered to go read again to make sure I got the details right in this post.

Gil Thorp, 11/11/20

Gil Thorp, meanwhile, has finally reached that all-important point in every storyline where Gil can no longer ignore the increasingly dumb antics that his student-athletes have gotten up to so far this semester. Today’s he’s decided to deal with the current set of problem children by yelling at them and, you know what? Fair.

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Gil Thorp, 11/2/20

So the big Gil Thorp fall plot is this: not only are two young gentlemen competing for the starting quarterback job, but they’re also vying for the affections of sassy newcomer Corina Karenna. One of the lads (I haven’t bothered learning their names and I’m not planning on doing so any time soon) has figured out that the best way to a girl’s heart is to recognize that she exists as an autonomous human with interests of her own outside himself, and is coming to watch her play volleyball, which is nice, and he’s bringing half the football team with him. These guys don’t know jack about volleyball, obviously, unlike volleyball superfan Dallas, who I’d like to imagine had the bleachers to himself every game before this. I also don’t know jack about volleyball, so I’d also like to imagine that “libero” is an entirely made-up term and Dallas is just fucking with these meatheads.

Mary Worth, 11/2/20

Aww, looks like it’s the dark night of the soul for our star-crossed lovers! Tommy is singing “The Sound of Silence” in his mind right now, because he was belting it out earlier before Mary knocked on the door to say that “Simon and Garfunkel seem like nice young men but it’s after eight o’cock, dear.”

Dick Tracy, 11/2/20

Is … is Dick Tracy really the guy you want on this? Is he going to arrest a gas leak? Or, more likely, shoot a gas leak while it’s “trying to escape”?

Dennis the Menace, 11/2/20

The best thing about this, to me? I think it’s safe to assume that Mr. Wilson is financially comfortable enough to buy all the groceries he needs, so this manual labor he’s doing in his garden bed is for fun, at some level. Dennis is right! Adulthood blows!