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Mary Worth, 7/29/23

Are you suffering from depression? Well, the good people at Mary Worth suggest that you simply reunite with a long lost friend, which will clear the problem up entirely. If you don’t have any friends, that frankly is not Mary Worth’s problem. Have you considered getting held hostage and barely escaping with your life? That’s a great way to meet people.

Hi and Lois, 7/29/23

Thirsty being kind of aggressively “fun” and wacky, waving his hands around … he’s drunk, right? Like, more than usual? I get why he’s so insistent, though: he’s finally figured out the secret to making golf fun and doesn’t want to let it go to waste.

Pluggers, 7/29/23

The way the he-plugger is clutching his chest here is evocative and disturbing to me. “Please, dear, stand up. We just need to make it to the car. We can’t afford the ambulance ride. I know you can do it!”

Gil Thorp, 7/29/23

“Imagine what they get away with in adult prisons. Oh, hey, I just happen to have this DVD about what they get away with in adult women’s prisons! Maybe we could watch that instead of the game? Ha ha, just kidding. Unless…?”

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Family Circus, 7/28/23

Ah, sweet, unlearned Jeffy! Having heard his parents and grandparents telling treacly stories of guardian angels, he assumes that everyone must have one, even characters in the fairy tales his parents read to him at night. But Ma Keane’s face shows that she knows the truth: that the protection offered by God and his heavenly messengers does not extend to freakish nightmare-beings like Humpty Dumpty. Man was made in the image of his Creator, and falls under His protective grace; but this egg-demon is clearly born of Hell itself, and being shattered on the ground, his guts oozing everywhere, is the fate he deserves.

Hi and Lois, 7/28/23

I assume, in a fatalistic way, that there are no new newspaper comics fans, and haven’t been for some time, and anyone still left reading them daily has really committed to the genre, and already knows all the lore. Still, I’d like to think that there are a certain number of people — not 10,000, surely, but at least a few — who are only learning today that Lois from Hi and Lois and Beetle from Beetle Bailey are siblings, and those people are absolutely losing their minds.

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Mary Worth, 7/17/23

Congratulations, Greta! You may be depressed due to trauma, but you’re at least seeing a vet who recently started seeing a therapist himself due to his own trauma-based depression. Does that mean that Dr. Ed is as good as a licensed therapist? Ha ha, no, absolutely not, but he’s a lot more forgiving about his patients pooping in the middle of a session than an actual therapist would be.

Hi and Lois, 7/17/23

Congratulations, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and the Horse! Not only were you “shortlisted for the 2020 British Book Awards Non-Fiction Lifestyle Book of the Year,” but you also got a barely legible appearance in a Hi and Lois strip where Hi and Lois are mad at each other for reasons neither will really articulate and the vibes are real bad!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/17/23

Congratulations, pickleball! You’ve reached the stage where the creative team for Barney Google and Snuffy Smith thinks its readership will know what you are, so you must be an integral part of American life at this point! (Bitcoin hit this stage back in 2015.)