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Hi and Lois and Blondie, 2/5/17

Is there anything more embarrassing than making a big, public gesture of your affection for someone else and having it not just rebuffed, but completely ignored? For their Super Bowl party, Hi and Lois have failed to invite any of their fellow damned souls from the Walker-Browne universe; Beetle Bailey, lest you forget, is actually Lois’s brother, and the Hagar the Horrible gang is probably … the Flagstons’ distant ancestors? Anyway, the point is, if it’s possible to bring the Bumsteads, a family from an entirely different intellectual property spacetime continuum, in for the Super Bowl, they easily could’ve done it with Sarge and Lucky Eddy or whoever. But nope, screw their actual family, the Flagstons would rather social climb with Blondie and Dagwood and … Mr. Dithers? Jesus, they invited Mr. Dithers to their party. Probably because he’s rich. Maybe this is like when Tom Cruise pretended to befriend his fellow Scientologist Leah Remini just so he could invite Remini’s pal J-Lo to his wedding in Italy and … where was I? Oh, right, the Flagstons are a bunch of phonies. Meanwhile, in his own actual universe, Dagwood is watching TV with his dog. Enjoy the game, everybody!

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Mary Worth, 1/14/17

OH SNAP GUYS THIS IS A METAPHOR! A metaphor for Iris’s current romantic dilemma, where she has to choose between Zak and Wilbur! It might not be obvious at first, but once you look at the details I think you’ll find it’s pretty clear:

• Zak is a simple grad student without much money, so his activities with Iris will be limited to things like bowling and cheap concerts for local bands. Iris is satisfied by her sexual encounters with Zak so consistently that they’ve almost become routine.
• Wilbur, meanwhile can afford the go-go world travelling lifestyle that only a lucrative syndicated newspaper columnist career can subsidize, voyaging to exotic Antarctica and Japan on a whim. However, due to Wilbur’s age and constant mayonnaise consumption, his heart could go at any time, meaning that any relationship with him could lack longevity. Zak, by contrast, is healthy and twenty years younger than Iris, and thus unlikely to predecease her.

It seems like a difficult choice! I don’t envy her!

Hi and Lois, 1/14/17

I really appreciate the amount of care that’s been put into the accoutrements of Thirsty’s sloth here. I’m particularly fond of the fact that there are two sock but only one shoe in evidence, that there’s a can of PBR on the floor and pint and shot glasses on the coffee table (no coasters, natch), and that there are multiple books strewn about, since just because you’re a slob doesn’t mean you’re a philistine. But the best for sure is Thirsty’s big smile as he naps on the Flagston’s couch. He hasn’t been this happy in years!

Gil Thorp, 1/14/17

“Aaron, your teammates overheard you talking about taking drugs. This is extremely serious.”

“But what if … I don’t offer you any explanation, and you wait until the end of the week when I reveal the truth in a dramatic fashion at the game against our biggest conference rival?”

“Enh, that’ll work.”

Marvin, 1/14/17

Ha ha! It’s funny because Jeff is happy to let Marvin stew in his own feces, as long as he doesn’t have to smell it!

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Dick Tracy, 12/5/16

It’s no secret that, once the days of Dick Tracy’s violent insanity ended in 2011 (with a storyline that concluded with a villain in a bondage mask being eaten alive by rats) and a new creative team took over, I stopped focusing much on the strip here, mostly because it just wasn’t such an object of sick fascination for me any more. There hasn’t been anything particularly dramatically different about the current plotline, yet somehow it’s really caught my imagination with its string of low-key absurdities as it shambled from “a mean Congresslady wants to put space aliens in concentration camps” to “a guy who can’t stop taking selfies is lying low at the zoo.” Anyway, today’s strip particularly tickled me, mostly because of Dick’s line in the first panel. “Another storage area? Who knew that zoos had so much stuff that they needed to store? When am I going to get to stop looking in areas where things are stored and start shooting people in the face?” Don’t worry, Dick, I’m pretty sure that getting cattle prodded in the back is very much something that the Major Crime Unit’s internal review board will be glad to let you get extremely trigger happy over!

Dennis the Menace, 12/5/16

Wow, Dennis the Menace turned into bondage porn so gradually we barely noticed!

Hi and Lois, 12/5/16

Wow, Hi and Lois turned into a crushingly realistic depiction of a couple exhausted by parenthood and slowly losing whatever residual affection they had for each other so gradually we barely noticed!

The Lockhorns, 12/5/16

Is this the first time we’ve seen the top of Leroy’s head? I don’t care for it. I don’t care for it at all.

Mary Worth, 12/5/16

[I run up the stairs and throw open the door to the rooftop]

[I’m on the roof of an apartment building in a dreary metropolis]

[It’s pouring rain]

[I run to the edge of the roof and with a great heave pull aside a huge tarp]

[Underneath it is an ancient-looking spotlight]

[I throw a huge switch on its side]

[electricity surges into it and huge shaft of light beams into the sky]

[something’s written on the spotlight, something that’s now visible across the city]

[everyone for miles around cranes their necks to read the message written on the clouds]

MARY WORTH IS ABOUT TO GIVE A FORTYSOMETHING WOMAN ADVICE ABOUT WHETHER IT’S OK TO FUCK A 25-YEAR-OLD.