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Mary Worth, 4/16/21

Oh, now we’re getting to what Dr. Jeff really means when he says Dr. Drew seems “dissatisfied with life” even though he hasn’t actually expressed any dissatisfaction: he’s not safely paired up in a monogamous heterosexual relationship, the way his happily married sister Adrian is. You remember Adrian, right? She used to occasionally get the romantic sad-sack storylines to take some of the burden off Dawn once in a while. She was engaged to a con artist at one point, then was in love with a cop but couldn’t commit to loving him until he was gunned down during a drug raid, so she agreed to marry him on what she assumed was his death bed, but he survived so she had to go through with it. Later, her bitter man-hating best friend Jill pulled out all the stops to ruin their wedding until Mary fixed her emotional problems. And then we really haven’t heard much from Adrian since! Maybe the reason Dr. Drew isn’t so eager to be married is that he knows that means banishment to a drama-free life, which in turn means he’ll never take center stage in this strip again. Or maybe it’s the endless casual sexual possibilities currently open to him as a handsome young doctor, who can say.

Hi and Lois, 4/16/21

Anyway, marriage leads to parenthood and parenthood leads to disillusionment and disillusionment leads to telling your kid, who still thinks that love and beauty are possible and enduring, that vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

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Mary Worth, 4/14/21

Ahh, I love to savor the early days of a new Mary Worth storyline, when it’s still full of promise and potential and we can fool ourselves that it isn’t going to spend literally weeks showing us two old people blandly emotionally processing things at the mall food court. Admittedly, we’re starting off with, uh, two old people blandly emotionally processing things in a hospital cafeteria, but, look, just let me have my dreams, OK? Anyway, it seems like the story is that Drew, a facile dipshit who’s long on good looks and short on introspection, is doing great, but what his father worries is: should he be doing great? Shouldn’t he be growing more dissatisfied under the crushing burdens of life’s disappointments? Mary seems resistant, but eventually she will be sent to pester him, and will plant the feeling of deep unease in his soul that is humanity’s birthright.

Dick Tracy, 4/14/21

Oh, right, I forgot that Rikki Mortis was an associate of notorious corpse-criminal Abner Kadaver, and that she got narc’d out to the cops by her fellow goth Dethany from On The Fastrack in one of the weird comics crossovers in the last decade. And by “associate” I mean “girlfriend,” obviously, so get ready to learn how creaky, shambling living corpses display physical affection for one another.

Dustin, 4/14/21

Much as I feel generalized disdain for everyone involved here, I do have to respect Dustin escalating his long-running war with his father to “Mom’s gonna cuck you, old man” levels.

Family Circus, 4/14/21

Man, somehow I feel like I don’t spend enough time on this blog emphasizing that the Keane Kids really are just canonically some of the stupidest people alive, you know?

Hi and Lois, 4/14/21

Wait, did I say stupid? Sorry, I meant “non-conformist.”

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Mary Worth, 4/12/21

Finally, finally, we are blessedly moving on from Saul and Eve’s emotional process and starting a new storyline in Mary Worth, and hell yeah it involves Dr. Drew Corey, the son Mary’s semi-boyfriend Dr. Jeff Corey! You may best remember Dr. Drew from that time Dawn decided to romance him, and he was receptive but also happened to be dating another lady at the same time, which earned him a thorough slapping that haunted him literally for years. He seemed like he had learned some valuable lessons from that episode and we haven’t heard much from him since, so it’s exciting to learn that he’s still kind of a dick. “Every day brings an interesting mix of ills! Get it, dad? Because they all have some terrible disease, poor bastards. Good thing Dr. Drew is here to help them! Or not, whatever, I get paid either way, it turns out.”

Dick Tracy, 4/12/21

Speaking of new storylines, we’re finally done with Dick Tracy’s hippie nonsense and have moved onto a new storyline here as well, which seems to involve a prisoner who, based on her pallor and catchy nickname, is clearly deceased. I guess it’s no surprise that in the carceral Neo-Chicago police state, not even death can keep you out of the clutches of the punitive justice system.

Crankshaft, 4/12/21

Wow, after some vaguely pandemic-presaging strips a few weeks ago, it looks like Crankshaft is going to leapfrog over the last year-plus of our lives entirely and just skip to “gosh, remember the pandemic, that was crazy,” huh? I’m of two minds about this: it could’ve really brightened my 2020 if I had been constantly wondering who in Crankshaft’s friend group of terrible old people was going to die of COVID, though I ultimately would’ve been bitterly disappointed when the answer turned out to be “none of them.”