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Gil Thorp, 7/13/21

It’s summertime in Milford, everybody! Is this the year we’re going to get a wacky summer storyline that isn’t about golf? Maybe! We definitely are going to get a wacky summer storyline about a beloved character from the past: Heather Burns, who you might remember as the girl who convinced a professional basketball player to get a master’s degree in history, possibly one of the worst pieces of advice I’ve ever seen given and I read the Mary Worth where Mary told a woman that if she didn’t like her past she should just remember it differently. Anyway, I can’t wait to see what Heather learned in Iowa (possibly after taking out tens of thousands of dollars in loans to get an MFA in creative writing) that will definitely help her career as a poorly paid writer for a dying small-town daily newspaper.

And in the other plot, we have … well, golf, I guess! At least one guy’s wearing a dumb hat, though. Can’t wait to see what antics this hat dude gets up to!

Hi and Lois, 7/13/21

Speaking of golf, I know it’s a rule that legacy cartoonists have to spend the entirety of each and every workday absolutely consumed with thoughts of all the golf they’re going to play when they’re finally done drawing cartoons for the day, but I think they’re supposed to actually come up with a punchline before they head out to the links, sorry guys.

Shoe, 7/13/21

[don’t get mad don’t get mad don’t get mad] IF YOU THINK HE TALKED FOR TOO LONG WHY ARE YOU MAD THAT HE TALKED SO FAST, WOULDN’T THAT HAVE MADE THE WHOLE THING GO QUICKER?????? [aw crap I got mad]

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Hi and Lois, 7/11/21

I don’t really care much about the lazily structured “joke” about Chip not mowing the lawn, but I am very interested in the tiny adult Hi (Himunculus?) in the top-row throwaway panel. Since Hi has been trapped in amber at the age of fortysomething since the strip launched in the Eisenhower Administration, his mental images of his youth and the past are understandably confused. “I was a child … in the ’50s, I think? And I smoked a pipe? I think I smoked a pipe in the ’50s?”

Dennis the Menace, 7/11/21

I am honestly very much here for Dennis the Menace strips where Dennis himself doesn’t even appear. Maybe the strips should be about his very absence, or maybe they should just be about what the other characters get up to without him. We haven’t had a comic strip character get Barney Googled in ages, and I think Dennis is a great candidate!

Marvin, 7/11/21

Me reading the first two panels of today’s Marvin: “Ah, a Marvin that isn’t about shitting for once!”

Me reading the the third panel of today’s Marvin: “Wait, unless…”

Me reading the first fourth panel of today’s Marvin: “Oh no”

Me reading the rest of the panels of today’s Marvin: “Oh NO”

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Mary Worth, 7/4/21

Not too much to say about Shauna vs. Ashlee: The Rumble At The Clinic For Drew’s Love except that the art here genuinely delights me. The dynamism of the hair-pulling in the middle row, the striking series of symmetries in the bottom row — it’s all great. I’m very sad that readers who don’t get the throwaway panels are missing out on the extreme Shauna closeup and quote from Yungblud (definitely an artist that I, a cool young person, had heard of and didn’t have to look up on Wikipedia to learn that he and Halsey broke up because they “worked better as friends”). Anyway, the next time this strip spends another six months on “dogs are good, actually,” we’ll have this moment to reflect back on and sustain us.

Hi and Lois, 7/4/21

I’m absolutely dying for an insight into whatever editorial process within King Features and/or Walker Brown Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC led to notorious local drunk Thirsty Thurston pointing to a box full of obviously illegal fireworks and calling them “legal fireworks.” Honestly the only way this would be funnier would be if Thirsty were doing an exaggerated wink at the reader when he said it, or if he blew several fingers off in the final panel.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 7/4/21

I’m not even going to bother with today’s dumb “mystery” and instead want to draw your attention to the Frankenstein-style monster looming in the bathroom doorway. It’s truly tragic that Count Weirdly, one of the last living humans in this animal-dominated world, is so lonely that he’s stitched together a shambolic golem out of the no doubt numerous human corpses available and animated it using forbidden science, just to have a friend.