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Blondie, 6/19/18

Apparently Blondie HQ finally got wind of the insanely dumb Rick and Morty fan riots at McDonald’s over Szechuan Sauce, and decided to tackle it as only they can, which is to say by taking care not to infringe on anybody else’s intellectual property. Still, I like the idea that in Dagwood’s imagination the dispute stops being about a specific kind of sauce and just becomes about sauce as a general category, and also that it only took nine signs before they got to extremely stilted phrases like “Unfair to sauce cravers” and “Stop the sauce withholding madness!”

Judge Parker, 6/19/18

“I ask that you hold all questions until the very end. Particularly about the spelling of my name, which, as I’ve already established, is M-A-H-L-E-R. Harold is spelled the usual way. I’m not sure how you spell Godiva. Ahem. At approximately 9:30 am, Ms. Danube’s body w–” “Commander Mahler! How do you spell ‘Danube?’” “God damn it, what did I say?”

Mary Worth, 6/19/18

“I’m close to my mom too. She’s still young and hot though, and has an extremely active sex life. [as Brandy’s weeping intensifies] How horny was your mom, Brandy?”

Mark Trail, 6/19/18

“Settle down, Rusty! Rambunctious little boys are the first to be sacrificed.”

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Dick Tracy, 6/18/18

Hey, remember how Sawtooth was on his way to Neo-Chicago, to do crimes? Well, even though he’s a brutal cop-killing thug with teeth made out of real saws, he still has other interests, and one of those interests is taking in live midnight audience-participation showings of the cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show. Too bad Sam Catchem was there too! God, you’d think you could avoid the cops at underground events like Rocky Horror, but I guess this is pretty clear evidence that it is not as alternative and punk rock as it was 30 years ago, right? Anyway, Sawtooth is about to punch a cop in a face, in public, which probably won’t help with the whole “sneaking into town in disguise” part of his plan.

Mary Worth, 6/18/18

Ahh, Tommy and Brandy, just another pair of economically marginal Americans working themselves to death! Maybe soon they’ll fall in love, share expenses on a tiny apartment in a so-so neighborhood, and occasionally get to have sex after work, assuming their shifts can sync up and they aren’t too exhausted.

Beetle Bailey, 6/18/18

Speaking of sex, Killer just did sex and … then came back to the barracks, literally putting off smoke? I don’t know why it bothers me so much that this is smoke and not steam. I know “putting off steam after sex” isn’t how sex works, but putting off smoke after sex is definitely not how sex works.

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Mary Worth, 6/14/18

Guys, guys, guys, are you ready for Tommy’s drug-free, Christ-centered summer romance? Because it’s happening! Tommy has chivalrously driven his comely co-worker home so she doesn’t have to take the bus, and I assume from his pregnant pause before “hang out” that her neighborhood was the site of some criminal adventures in his younger “very own meth lab” days. That’s probably where he went to buy — as an ahead-of-his-time entrepreneur, when it came time for him to peddle his wares, he did so in the leafy environs of UC Santa Royale, which unfortunately resulted in his immediate arrest. Anyway, I assume that Brandy lives downtown, which in the ’00s was a seedy, nightmarish hellscape filled with tank-top wearing toughs and abused women who had to suffer at the women’s shelter if they didn’t have a nice lady like Mary to take them back to her condo; but today it has a burgeoning arts scene and is, as Brandy notes, gentrifying nicely. Better not try any funny drug business around here now, Tommy! The cops actually respond to calls downtown these days!

Gasoline Alley, 6/14/18

Good news! Slim has finally received medication to help treat his terrible head injury, and it’s immediately sent him into an erotic desert island reverie. Did you know “play post office” is code for “three-way makeout fest”? I didn’t, and I’m now having to re-evaluate everything I thought I knew about the American mail distribution system.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/14/18

Last week’s Crankshafts were all about how Crankshaft hoarded thousands of “Bean’s End Catalogs” (Bean’s End being like the combination of LL Bean and Land’s End, only … about gardening equipment rather than sensible clothing?) and eventually agreed to sell them off, and then they were purchased by obsessive collector Chester “The Chiseler”; meanwhile, ten years later in the Funkypresent, Chester, now the employer of Darin and Mopey Pete at a doomed comics startup, decided to unload his Bean’s End Catalog collection on eBay in order to bring in some cash to stretch out the lifespan of said doomed comics startup. I didn’t cover any of this at the time because it was all boring, but I am assuming that Funky’s dad lurking around weirdly and overhearing this conversation will lead to him buying said Bean’s End Catalogs as a gift for the now-comatose Crankshaft. I’m not sure how this dovetails in with the few things I seem to remember about Funky-dad’s characterization, which is that he’s an alcoholic and a real asshole, but if he ends up spending the bulk of Funky’s inheritance on a futile gesture of kindness towards a man who won’t appreciate or even notice it, that’s OK with me!

Mark Trail, 6/14/18

“A whole country full of ruins? An entire civilization laid waste by foreign invaders and the alien diseases they brought with them, their people reduced to a subordinate caste for centuries and their monuments left to crumble in the jungle? And now I get to climb all over them and take pictures? That’s amazing! I can’t get enough!”

Pluggers, 6/14/18

You’re a plugger if everyone you know is either sick or dead.