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Mary Worth, 10/2/23

Do you think Mary aggressively pesters new Charterstone residents to accept her casserole-based hospitality because she wants them to feel welcome? Oh, you sweet summer child. No, her main goal is to get inside their apartment and engage them in seemingly casual chit-chat to see if either reveals a potential entry point for hard-core meddling. A lot of times it doesn’t work out, but do you sees Mary’s eyes here?

Normally that’s the kind of expression you’d expect when seeing an addict in the throes of a high after taking a big hit of their favorite drug, and in a way you’re correct. Mary is straight-up mainlining a surprise dose of Complicated Family Situation That May Benefit From Advice From An Outside Party, and I hope her heart can handle it.

Blondie, 10/2/23

Sorry, Blondie, you came so close to convincing me that you’re created by “real Americans” who enjoy NFL football, but then you got to “unemployment team” and your metaphor completely foundered. If one of your players sucks, you can just cut them from the team! You don’t have to trade them to anybody! If they’re as incompetent as Dagwood, probably no other team would want them!

The Lockhorns, 10/2/23

Leroy and Loretta live in a quintessential suburban neighborhood, but given Leroy’s Jets fandom and rail commute, I always assumed they were in Long Island, probably an older tract in Nassau County or maybe even outer Queens. Does this track with him apparently being a Nets fan? I was going to say that the Nets are kind of johnny-come-latelies to New York, but they moved from New Jersey 11 years ago, and since I firmly believe that the Lockhorns are millennials, that’s probably plenty long enough for Leroy to have committed himself to them. I’ll leave the final call here to New York-area readers, but I do want to add that in order for this joke to really land, we need to understand those shorts as being the big baggy kind that extend well past the knee, something difficult to depict on a gnomish creature like Leroy Lockhorn.

Pluggers, 10/2/23

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but I think headlines like “Dozens of simple, down-home working-class Americans die after incorrectly parsing Pluggers panel” will not do this feature any favors.

Six Chix, 10/2/23

I dunno, given that these two functionally identical panels have a number of differences in detail showing that the second panel was mostly redrawn, I’m going to say that artist brought far more of herself to the job today than she really needed to.

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Mary Worth, 9/15/23

Ahh, it’s Friday, so that means that this eternal plot has got to be wrapping up and we’ll finally be moving on to someth– oh no. Oh no. Sources inform me that Mary Worth will now be doing a storyline where Saul introduces Eve to the world of “online,” much like the 2011 story where Wilbur showed Mary how to use Twitter, except that 2023 internet is much darker than 2011 internet so we need to set our expectations accordingly. The best case scenario, given Saul’s seemingly out-of-context emphasis on Eve’s physical beauty, is that he has plans to turn her into a social media influencer, posting tasteful content across platforms aimed at statuesque senior women looking for fashion and beauty tips, and also appealing those of all genders and ages who find such women attractive. Worst case scenario? Well, let’s just say that the person who was driven by the Pizzagate conspiracy theory to bring a gun into Comet Ping Pong in 2016 had only gotten home internet a few weeks before, so imagine what going from zero to extremely online could do to Eve’s delicate psyche!

The Lockhorns, 9/15/23

I guess the joke is that Loretta’s mother is calling Leroy fat, but I prefer to interpret this as meaning that she either has finally accepted the couple’s S&M relationship or that she’s encouraging Leroy to hang himself.

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Dustin, 9/14/23

Apologies (?) for not showing you yesterday’s Dustin, which consisted of Dustin asking his dad to guess the global gross domestic product, and Dustin’s dad guessing $100 trillion when the actual answer was $102 trillion (according to the strip, anyway, but if you think I’m doing any research whatsoever to fact-check a gag in Dustin you are sorely mistaken), and there was some bemused discussion of how his guess was quite close in relative terms despite being off by $2 trillion, a very large sum when considered on its own. Anyway, this was annoying but not that annoying — certainly not that annoying by Dustin’s usual standards — so I didn’t bother talking about it here. But repeating the exact same “joke” today, with nothing new added other than a shuffle in the lineup of characters saying it? Well, that’s annoying enough to bring to your attention. If they try to get a whole week out of this concept, I’m going to be very annoyed indeed.

The Lockhorns, 9/14/23

See, if you’re going to do a themed week, you really need to follow the lead of The Lockhorns and do it with a real purity of purpose and tight focus. This week is apparently “Lockhorns anniversary week,” the theme of which is that Leroy and Loretta use the occasion to attack and belittle one another in anniversary-specific ways, as opposed to the more general ways in which they do it over the rest of the year.

Gil Thorp, 9/14/23

Wow, it looks like Toby and Rod really used their time in prison to sharpen their football skills, huh? This is going to send an important message to student-athletes everywhere: that the best way to get a leg up is to go to juvie where they’ll be forced to play football for the entertainment of a sadistic warden, so they need to do some crimes, but not crimes so serious that they get sent to adult prison, where the sadistic warden can only be entertained by no-holds-barred steel cage matches.

Blondie, 9/14/23

Love the way Elmo is solemnly making direct eye contact with the reader in the final panel here. This truly is an important lesson about school picture day that America’s children need to learn, which is why it’s so tragic that no children read Blondie.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/14/23

RENE THEY ARE ONLY TRYING TO PAY YOU THE MONEY YOU ARE OWED AS EFFICIENTLY AS POSSIBLE, WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE CRIME AND THREATS WITH YOU