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Mary Worth, 10/25/22

Good (?) news, everybody: Zak didn’t fall to his death mid-selfie, or at least he hasn’t yet! No, he’s grabbed onto a cliffside branch, Sgt. Snorkel style, and now needs Iris to drag him to safety. There was a bit of dialogue in a strip last week in which Iris said she can easily handle this hike due to the “strength training” she’s been doing; I assume that, despite her current protests, she will eventually be able to rescue Zak, finding her power in an adrenaline-fueled burst like the stories you hear about mothers lifting up cars to save their children, which really fits in with the nature of their relationship.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/25/22

When Summer announced her plan to follow in her father’s footsteps and write a book, a lot of my commenters speculated that she would be following in her father’s footsteps and writing a book about her mother, Les’s dead wife Lisa. But, nope! Turns out she’s going to be writing about all the alive losers in her dumb loser town, which frankly seems like a much, much worse idea.

Hi and Lois, 10/25/22

I truly enjoy the fact that in panel one Lois and Irma are genuinely shocked by whorish athleisure fashions of the sort that used to be impossible in polite society but are now on sale at every department store, but in panel two they’ve managed to mediate their discomfort through an ironic quip to find their equilibrium. Do I enjoy the fact that this attitude has been grafted onto women who canonically cannot be past their early 40s, women who have never worn a girdle in their lives and whose mothers probably never did either? Well, no, but that is just a professional hazard of writing a blog about newspaper comics strips, where the assumed age of your audience is roughly 75.

Gasoline Alley, 10/25/22

Speaking of which, it is absolutely shocking to me that any character in Gasoline Alley is supposed to have seen a film made as recently as 2016. This strip is going to cause riots in the streets!

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Dustin, 10/23/22

The thing about Dustin is that it was originally sold in 2010 as a look at Boomer-Millennial tensions, but also the Boomer dad is clearly the viewpoint character so it was mostly about how Millennials annoyed him. Annoying as Millennials are, however, twelve years is a long time to go to that well, and so now the strip is at least 25% “random non-Millennial things the viewpoint character is annoyed by” by volume. And the punchline? The punchline, my friend, is the viewpoint character being as insufferable as possible about it. That’s the funny pages!

Mary Worth, 10/23/22

At least Mary Worth knows what it takes to make America laugh again: beloved millionaire himbo Zak falling to his death in front of his horrified not-fiancée. Publius Syrus is right, kids: learn caution from Iris’s misfortune, and do not get emotionally attached to a self-confident moron like Zak and then hike to a dramatic cliffside vista.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/23/22

Look, Summer, take it from me, someone who has both gone to grad school and written a book: those are not your only two choices in life, and just about all the other ones are going to frankly be a lot better for your financial and emotional well-being.

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Gil Thorp, 10/21/22

Look, we all know that there’s supposed to be an apostrophe in “Yonkers,” and the joke is that Madame Yonker’s fever is up, meaning she’s sick, but wouldn’t it be funnier if that weren’t the case? “What’s up is Madame Yonkers Fever, the latest craze where we all take turns pretending to be ‘Madame Yonkers,’ a French teacher that we made up! C’mon, Gil, join in on the fun! It’s been in Time and Newsweek, and, I assume, on TikTok.”

Dick Tracy, 10/21/22

So Steelface is the guy whose nephew is doing Vitamin’s comics play, and his particular criminal gimmick is that he’s running some kind of auto theft ring, and, unrelated, has a metal face. Today’s strip is particularly evocative: despite working in the shadowy underworld, Steelface still speaks the language of modern capitalism, in which the vehicles at the heart of his operation are reduced to mere “units” that must be “processed,” and processed more efficiently to boot. Goodwin tries to play along, but he still sees each stolen car as a unique individual and dares to share his truth with his boss and let him know what makes each of them special.

Mary Worth, 10/21/22

Sure, dating a younger man seems cool: the sex is great, and they’re more likely to have made millions from their app startup than someone your age. But there are downsides: they’re much more prone to dying in an Instagram-related accident before your very eyes. Beware!