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Gasoline Alley, 9/25/23

Oh, man, were you wondering what happened in the story of the lost little boy who was about to be taken away from his talking bear friend by the authorities? Well, what happened is that talking bear attacked the authorities, who dropped the child and fled in terror, as most people would when faced by an aggressive bear. Anyway, it’s true that troubles are just starting, both for the bear (revelation that talking bears are seizing human children will end in the state intervening with maximum force) and the rest of us (Human-Bear Wars will last most of the 21st century, leave the earth a depopulated wasteland).

Mary Worth, 9/25/23

It seems that Keith Hillend, while always unfailingly polite with the woman who descended upon him and started badgering him with irrelevant information while he was trying to move in to his new apartment, simply did not want to linger and chit-chat with her. Unacceptable. UNACCEPTABLE. She’s going to show up at his door and FORCE this tray of steaming hot tan glop onto him. Then he’ll have to make polite conversation with her, if he wants the antidote.

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Blondie, 9/21/23

Way back in 2006 — which, I take no pleasure in reporting, was a full 17 years ago — there was a weird rash of syndicated newspaper comic strips doing jokes about how crazy it was that people would actually pay extra for distressed jeans. This was not exactly fresh material even then, but that didn’t stop They’ll Do It Every Time (RIP) and Six Chix and Pluggers and Curtis from making hay out of it. Normally I’d cruelly mock Blondie for being close to two decades late on this trend, but I do have to grudgingly respect the fact that instead of just laughing at this hot youth trend, Dagwood and Blondie are instead figuring out how to profit from it, like the innovators they are.

Marvin, 9/21/23

I genuinely kind of love that Jenny has the same bright smile in both the first and third panels of this comic. They even didn’t have a fight or anything! Instead she had the extremely freeing experience of hearing her spouse’s opinion and realizing she just didn’t care about it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/21/23

Look, Rex Morgan, M.D., has one (1) recurring bad guy, so I’m going to need more evidence before I believe that he’s been brought to a state of blubbering catharsis by having his own pop-psychology scam repeated back to him by a roots country star. It seems more likely to me that, despite his understandable desire to get the money he’s owed, he’s been overcome by a similarly understandable desire to not hang around with these two drips anymore and sees a sudden change of heart/personality as a good opportunity to leave this scene behind him.

Mary Worth, 9/21/23

What do you guys think is in the bag, huh? A human head? It’s a human head, right? [everyone starts pounding rhythmically on the table] HU! MAN! HEAD! HU! MAN! HEAD!

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Mary Worth, 9/20/23

You know, if you’re a Worth-head come lately, you might think of Mary Worth as a strip primarily about a core rotating cast of characters (Mary and Jeff, Wilbur and the sad parade of women who at one time or another had sex with him for some reason, Saul and Eve and their dogs, Ian and Toby if we’re really desperate). But for most of this strip’s history, Mary was a sort of Rod Serling-esque figure who served to introduce us to stories about one-off characters who wandered through Charterstone and/or the greater Santa Royale area and then left once their plot had been resolved, never to be seen again. I sincerely miss stories like “An old lady does not want her daughter to date” and “Charterstone’s local pervert uses truly sick art to seduce the unwary” and “Uh oh! A child has been kidnapped!”, and I am honestly very hopeful that the absolutely huge slab of man-meat that is Keith Hillend (he’s named that because he’s bigger than the end of a hill) will end up being the center of a new self-contained story instead of getting entangled with, say, Dawn.

Gil Thorp, 9/20/23

I don’t care that much about this flash of intra-Mudlark coaching staff drama, but I do want to say that it very much tracks that the Coach of the Year Award, a trophy they apparently just give to Gil every year, is referred to by its abbreviation, COTY, pronounced “coaty” and so universally known that you can just slip it into indignant accusations like “You insulted Gil when he won COTY!” and be sure that everyone will know what you’re talking about.

Pluggers, 9/20/23

That’s a murder weapon, right? Those stains are more blood than rust? We can all agree this plugger is going to “fix” things, via murder, which ought to “do the trick”?