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Mary Worth, 7/4/23

Greetings, fellow Americans! Hopefully you are spending today watching fireworks and patriotically contemplating’s our nation’s successful defeat of the accursed British in our War of Independence, like Mary is in today’s strip. But sadly, many comics characters are not — a group that apparently includes all of Mary’s friends, since she’s just sitting on this hillside by self. Sure, Old Man Wynter and his posse are probably making sure Greta’s trauma (oh, they found Greta by the way, she managed to get the cage open herself and escape) isn’t compounded by the fireworks noises, but what about Ian and Toby? Dr. Jeff? Wilbur? Do they have something better to do than bask in the majesty of American greatness? Apparently so, and as we’ll see in the following strips, they are not alone.

Blondie, 7/4/23

Remember back in May when Dagwood wanted everyone to know that nobody could best him when it came to respecting the troops, but it turned out it was just a ruse to prevent his nap from being interrupted? Well, now he can’t even be bothered to use patriotism as a pretext.

Beetle Bailey, 7/4/23

Honestly, though, who could blame him when the troops themselves don’t seem to care about America’s birthday? Today’s Beetle Bailey includes the most half-assed wedged-in patriotic message since the infamous Luann 9/11 anniversary strip. I guess we can’t expect these soldiers to put energy into frivolous partying, even the most patriotic kind, when there’s important military preparedness work to be done. I hear the People’s Liberation Army’s lawns are immaculate.

Family Circus, 7/4/23

Jeffy’s OK with fireworks, but doesn’t want to share space with others enjoying them in ways he doesn’t approve of. He loves America but is annoyed by his fellow Americans and that’s no kind of patriotism at all!

The Lockhorns, 7/4/23

Leroy is using the 4th as yet another opportunity to be unpleasantly horny, and honestly? I’ll allow it.

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Six Chix, 7/3/23

I like this one! I like this one because it implies either that crabs are the undersea equivalent of Americans, or that in the far future, Americans will evolve into crabs and take to the sea in order to escape our blighted surface but still retain a dim memory of the national habits and holidays of their distant ancestors. Either way, they exist in some sort of celebratory symbiosis with the jellyfish, a relationship that (I hope) is mutually beneficial.

The Lockhorns, 7/3/23

I’m really loving these two dudes sitting at the bar with big smiles on their faces. They’re all in the Hate Wife Club! Leroy is their new best friend and tonight they’re gonna tear this town up (have three more cocktails, get morose, the other two are going to call their wives up and beg for forgiveness and go home and leave Leroy with the beardy bartender who gets increasingly pointed as closing time approaches and Leroy continues to refuse to make eye contact).

Pluggers, 7/3/23

C’mon, man, that’s not a possum, that’s a bear! Oh, wait, he’s just playing possum. Anyway, c’mon, man, he’s not pretending to be dead, he’s actually dead! Been dead for hours! Kangaroo lady’s going to figure it out soon and it’s gonna hit her like a ton of bricks!

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The Lockhorns, 7/1/23

Ahh, another entry in the “Lockhorns are millennials” files: Yes, Leroy got up to 301 at UCB, yes he absolutely was that guy who derailed every scene to focus on his extremely unfunny obsessions, yes, he always tried to push things towards scenarios that would allow him to feel up his female classmates, and yes everyone he took the class with set up a new group chat without him as soon as the class ended. He preemptively told Loretta “not to bother” coming to the class show at the end of the session because “most people don’t have guests” — he told himself it was because maybe something might happen with one of the girls in the class at the afterparty, but in fact he knew that if Loretta had seen him alive and vulnerable on stage, she would have delivered one of the most savage putdowns she’d ever mustered on the ride home.

Mary Worth, 7/1/23

Ha ha, what if it were a pizza, though. It would be pretty funny if there were just a big pizza lying on the ground and Max ran up and started snarfing up all that cheese and getting tomato sauce all over his snout. Turns out Max doesn’t give a shit about Greta! It was about the pizza all along!