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Mary Worth, 1/20/15

Uh oh, looks like there’s trouble in flute-playing paradise for Hanna and Sean! Why doesn’t Sean want Hanna to tag along with him to the nearby medical center? Does he want to keep the details about the medical ailment for which he’s seeking treatment secret from his new beau, because they’re embarrassing (incurable VD) or emotionally traumatizing (incurable impending death)? Is “nearby medical center” actually a euphemism for “the retirement home where one of my other girlfriends lives”? Is Hanna just starting to cramp his style? Is he going to blurt out “STOP SMOTHERING ME,” shattering this fragile happiness forever?

Judge Parker, 1/20/15

Every decade or so the soap opera strips need to offer up their backstories to new readers (haha, the soap opera strips think they have “new” readers) so I guess we’re going to hear the true tale of Neddy and Sophie, Tragic Orphans! I like the phrase “while Sam and Abbey were figuring out what to do with us,” because it conjures up the image of the destitute hobo family, rounded up by Spencer Farms security and locked in the holding cell deep beneath the stables, while Sam and Abbey watch the panicked trio on a hidden camera. “What should we do with them?” asks Sam. “We can’t let them go. They’ve already seen too much.” Then the grandfather dies. As the terrified children wail, Abbey rubs her chin. “I think … I’m pretty sure they’re going to grow up sexy, Sam. I think we can keep them.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/20/15

Jughaid is beginning to realize that his socio-economic class is so widely despised that contempt for it is engrained in the English language itself.

Dick Tracy, 1/20/15

Good news! The Dick Tracy–Funky Winkerbean crossover is going great. In today’s strip, our cop heroes use the implied power they have to imprison and punish to make Funky feel awkward and scared over a harmless joke.

Mark Trail, 1/20/15

I admit that I don’t fully grasp all the nuances of the villains’ scheme in the current Mark Trail plot, though I think it’s a safe bet that they’re all extremely stupid. So I don’t know why exactly this boat blew up, but when a Mark Trail installment consists entirely of a single-panel boat explosion, you’d better believe I’m going to report that to you.

Herb and Jamaal, 1/20/15

This punchline would’ve been a lot more obvious if Herb were looking at a smartphone or one of the other “modern technological advancements” Jamaal name-checks (a fax machine, maybe?). But frankly I like it how it stands. Herb doesn’t need your fancy high-tech geegaws to be a dick.

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Mary Worth, 1/13/15

Tobey often exists in this strip as someone to half-listen all glassy eyed to Mary’s expository gossip-blather, but she sure seems interested in the elder-loving goings on around Charterstone today! Maybe it’s recently occurred to her that Ian, the December to her May, is likely to leave her a widow at a young age after rage-stroking out. “Gee, Hanna found a boyfriend over at the nursing home, and she’s almost as old as he is! If I go sashaying over there when I’m, say, 55, I’ll have my pick!”

Mark Trail, 1/13/15

Is whacking a gator on the neck with a big stick an approved method of scaring it away? Sure, why the heck not. Mark has taken his time and picked up the villain’s gun quite a ways away from where the gator is, so I’m assuming that his nemesis was in fact eaten yesterday and this is some kind of advanced alligator Heimlich maneuver. He’ll be “help[ing] him out” of the beast’s gullet, presumably significantly worse for wear.

Dennis the Menace, 1/13/15

OK, I’ll admit it: the sight of Dennis and Joey leaning back in intense intestinal distress is completely delightful and funny and poignant to me, at all once. There are few things more menacing to your sense of ease than discovering that your appetites can actually outpace the capacities of your body.

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Gil Thorp, 1/12/15

There’s been a definite and sad decline in the number of Marty Moon plotlines in Gil Thorp lately, which is really too bad because he’s an amazing character who’s engaged in lots of fun hijinks over the years. Like the time he got grifted at golf by a Ben Franklin lookalike and ended up passing out drunk in his car, or when he had a public access TV show dedicated entirely to talking smack about Gil but then his bosses got tired of his routine and replaced him with a pair of dumb teens. He even once pretended to be a kid’s dad, in order to trick Social Services into believing that kid had a stable home life! But lately he’s been reduced to asking Gil occasional pointed questions and doing his play-by-play from a inside a wooden packing crate. So I’m excited about Gil warning his naive young player about Marty’s unscrupulous journalistic practices, because hopefully that means we’re going to be treated to some actual unscrupulous journalistic practices, or at least Gil rousting himself from his usual ennui to yell at Marty Moon for perceived transgressions.

Mark Trail, 1/12/15

Just based on this strip you might think this alligator attacking Bald Ponytail False Flag Ecoterrorist is some kind of coincidence, but in fact Mark spent most of last week carefully luring this villain to an “alligator mound,” which I guess is a mound that … alligators … live … in or near, or something, and as someone who gets most of his nature info from Mark Trail, I’m going to go ahead and believe this is a Real Thing. Anyhoo, I’m a little disappointed that our baddie has turned into a stiff, expressionless Ken doll at the moment the beautiful and violent alligator lunges at him, but I am quite charmed by the evocative final panel, as his useless pistol falls to the earth while he’s presumably being devoured off-panel.

Apartment 3-G, 1/12/15

There was a point, early in this blog, where I used to do some jokes about how Margo loves cocaine. It never really became that much of a running bit, but, just for the record, she still really loves cocaine.

Heathcliff, 1/12/15

If being rolled up into a giant Wicker Man-style effigy made out of snow and worshipped like a god by mice is wrong, then Heathcliff doesn’t want to be right.