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Funky Winkerbean, 7/20/16

It’s hard to remember now, but Funky Winkerbean used to be a fun, whimsical strip that included exaggerated, cartoonish elements, like Les serving as a hall monitor in a machine gun nest, which readers did not immediately assume meant that he had finally snapped and planned to gun down the whole town. The current plotline, involving Darrin and Mopey Pete raiding a cargo ship off the coast of Los Angeles to get a crate of Darrin’s favorite pens, seems to harken back to those days of yore, but mostly just makes it clear that you can never actually go home again. These strips are embedded in the current hyper-realistic, hyper-pessimistic version of Funky Winkerbean, and all I can think about while catching up on their hijinks is their inevitable rendition to Guantanamo Bay and trial before a military tribunal for violation of various Laws of the Sea.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/20/16

From the look on Samanthy Jane’s face, it seems that she alone is beginning to question Hootin’ Holler’s political order, in which citizens attempt to decipher the will of a hereditary line of dogs as the basis for government policy.

Judge Parker, 7/20/16

“No, no, let’s do the unpaved road thing! It’s a totally normal and efficient shortcut, and definitely not through the property of some crazed murderous friends of my dad who will kill everyone but Derek and then lock him up in their art cave, where only I’ll be allowed access to him!”

Mary Worth, 7/20/16

“Has your brother considered switching from booze to pills? I understand they’re extremely relaxing.”

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Judge Parker, 7/11/16

I don’t really have the strength to get into the various nuances of the Sophie-Derek-Honey triangle, or how the details have shifted over time to make Sophie look better. I just want to enjoy Derek’s hilarious pissyface in panel one. Look at that thing! It’s almost like he thought inviting two girls who like him but hate each other on this trip was a good idea and the scenario was going to work out great for him and everyone else involved. Sorry Derek!

Gil Thorp, 7/11/16

Is this funeral in a church? I really want Tru to have his full on nihilist breakdown in a church. “Some things are just random. No omniscient deity guides us towards an ending that was meant to be! Nothing has any meaning!” [clergyman attempts to drag him away] “Get your hands off me, you charlatan!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/11/16

Meanwhile, in the “Rex found valuable comic books under the floorboard of his attic” plot, Rex’s pals are putting the valuable comic books that have been slowly mouldering under the floorboards of Rex’s attic for decades into protective sleeves, apparently under the misapprehension that protective sleeves work retroactively.

Slylock Fox, 7/11/16

You know, considering how often Slylock has Max and Melanie over socially, you’d think he’d get some chairs they could actually sit in.

(Psst! Today’s the twelfth anniversary of the day I started this blog by writing a pissy screed about Non Sequitur, for some reason! Thanks to everyone who’s been reading for twelve years or twelve minutes. It’s still fun and you’re all great!)

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Mary Worth, 7/1/16

This Mary Worth story isn’t just going to be about Wilbur forcing the Japanese to express emotions or Mary ghostwriting Wilbur’s column or Mary managing the help; it’s also about Wilbur’s girlfriend Iris and her ex-con son Tommy moving from one apartment to another! You might remember Tommy as an an aspiring meth entrepreneur (that panel’s from four years before Breaking Bad came out, people: Mary Worth is once again an innovator) who had cool hair; later, after he got paroled, he sold out and got a haircut so he could get a job as a janitor and a sandwich emporium. It’s nice to see that gainful employment hasn’t prevented him from growing it out again, although from the look of things maybe he’s just trying to match his mom’s hairstyle, presumably because they’ve joined some kind of cult together.

Gasoline Alley, 7/1/16

Since this coin is supposedly nearly 2,000 years old, you think Skeezik would want it examined by … I dunno, maybe an academic of some kind, rather than a pawn shop? I bet he regrets voting “Yes” in the referendum on the Expel All Intellectual Eggheads From Gasoline Alley Act now!

Judge Parker, 7/1/16

“Or maybe she just doesn’t like you! Have you considered that she might not like you? Often the most obvious explanations are also the correct ones.”

Pluggers, 7/1/16

[at the Tribune Company, 1993]

“…and we’ll illustrate the reader ideas with whimsical half-person, half-animal creatures.”

“That sounds great. One thing that occurs to me, though: won’t a lot of these reader ideas involve pets? The ordinary folks we’re targeting with this strip love their pets! Won’t that be extremely unsettling, as we’ll be implying a world where the division between humans and beasts isn’t a bright line, a world where there’s a muddled continuum of sapience?”

“No, I don’t think that’ll be a problem at all.”