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Herb and Jamaal, 4/20/16

Let’s skip over the tired husband vs. mother-in-law banter here to point out something very sad: Herb is walking around his own home with a cardboard box full of forlorn knicknacks that’s just labelled “my stuff.” Does he not have even a shelf of his own where he can stash his lamp and his … smaller lamp, and his, uh, is that a book, maybe? Or another box inside the bigger box? Anyway, the point is, Herb as a vagabond within his own house, going to bed at night hugging a pathetic box of stuff because he’s afraid someone’s going to take it from him, is much fuller of narrative pathos than Herb’s mother-in-law implying that he’s trash or whatever.

Judge Parker, 4/20/16

It’s come to our attention that you didn’t really get the message when we named Godiva’s rival “Worbell Trilling.” We wanted to name her “Whorebell,” but the syndicate it nixed it. Anyway, she’s the queen of tramps! Just to make that clear. She also looks exactly like if Godiva got zapped with some kind of face-shrinking ray?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/20/16

I absolutely love Rex’s dubious expression in the last panel here. It’s as if he’s only just now realizing his family and friends have spent the last three years feeding his daughter’s megalomania. “An extravagant museum gala? For my six-year-old daughter? That, uh … that might … huh. Huh. Well, probably too late to anything about it now, but … um.”

Slylock Fox, 4/20/16

Just some helpful tips for new rabbit owners here! Do try to convince them to poop in a box! Don’t try to get them to barf, they’ll never do it! Definitely don’t try to get them to have sex with hares, that’s a whole different animal and that’s gross and wrong. Just try to sleep at night thinking about how their front teeth are growing, always growing, leading to an insatiable need to chew chew chew CHEW. You probably can’t!

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Dick Tracy, 4/13/16

If there’s one thing we associate with Dick Tracy, it’s gruesome, authoritarian violence, but if there’s one other thing we associate with Dick Tracy, it’s oddly-shaped criminals with really on-the-nose names. But generally those names have at least a bit of fun wordplay involved. Like Professor Glitch! See, because he works with computers, and computers have glitches, sometimes! Or Matty Squared, who appears to be some kind of artificial intelligence housed in a basically square casing! That’s why I’m actively offended by the current boss of the strip’s bad guy hierarchy, Mr. Bribery. See, they call him that because he … bribes people? I assume? I actually don’t think we’ve ever seen him bribe anybody. Is supposed to be … ironic? Maybe?

Lockhorns, 4/13/16

I’m pretty sure that this joke would work better if Leroy were actually smiling. But then, this may just be a case where Loretta’s long experience with Leroy’s misery blinds her to what others see. She can parse where Leroy is on his emotional spectrum, which ranges from “suicidally miserable” to “briefly capable of seeing how a third party might enjoy my life as an ironic farce,” but to everyone else, a crumplefrown is just a crumplefrown.

Judge Parker, 4/13/16

This whole is-Rocky-cheating-on-Godiva-or-isn’t-he plot has been super boring, mostly because it’s all taken place off panel while our heroes endlessly rehash their limited information on the subject. I would argue that the way to jazz it up would be to actually show us what Rocky’s up to, and not, in the direction that we appear to be going here, to have the characters endlessly rehash their limited information on the subject while casually taking off their shirts.

Mary Worth, 4/13/16

WHEW, FALSE ALARM EVERYBODY

HARLAN JONES IS HETEROSEXUAL, BEREAVED, AND OWNS AN ADORABLE DOG

STUDENT-TEACHER MACKING MAY COMMENCE

(the less said about this strip’s first-ever attempt to depict Dawn’s boobs, and to do so from a “dog’s-eye view,” the better)

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Crock, 4/6/16

Ha ha, “downloading” is definitely a word related to computers in some way, and “the recycle bin” is definitely part of the desktop metaphor used in the popular Windows operating system! “Download that to the old recycle bin,” that’s what the kids say, when they’re surfing on their PCs and such. Hilarious! In other news, due to the inexorable march of mechanical efficiency, this domesticated camel is no longer needed by its human masters, and so it will be released into the wild to inepty fend for itself, or possibly just killed so its carcass can be processed for a number of industrial uses.

Judge Parker, 4/6/16

Speaking of the inexorable march of efficiency, I’m very excited to hear that Neddy’s half-baked plan to out-compete Chinese labor by extracting the last few useful labor-hours out of government-subsidized old people has now become a “movement.” And look in that gleam in Foster Chubb’s eyes! This is a man who thought he could grift the Spencer-Parkers with comically stagy wound dressings, so sure, he’s 100% on board with this “groundswell of support” that will somehow defeat basic economics.

Six Chix, 4/6/16

Definitely if I had died, and my immortal soul had been misplaced in some mysterious subvoid for an uncountable age, and then I was yanked out of that only to be shepherded into an even more unknowable afterlife, that’s the dazed, terrified expression I’d have on my face.

Hi and Lois, 4/6/16

Hey guys, uhhhhhh, it turns out Trixie can read? This has a number of unsettling implications that I’m reasonably sure aren’t going to be pursued.

Mary Worth, 4/6/16

“I mean, I could tell after one class that Harlan Jones doesn’t know jack shit about art history, and he still got a job here, so there must be something to it!”