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Mary Worth, 7/17/22

Finally, finally, Jared is experiencing some real emotional pain that goes beyond his standard-issue petulant whining and mild self-loathing. I’m not sure if he’s breaking down in tears because he can’t believe how cruel this world can be to a beautiful person like Jess, or if he’s breaking down in tears because he’s living a lie and he doesn’t actually find Jess beautiful at all and he can’t believe how cruel he’s being. There’ll be time to learn more later. The important part is that he’s suffering, and I’m grateful for that.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/17/22

Oh hey, remember how Andrzej thought he was dying, so he snuck off to the hospital, but then it just turned out to be indigestion? Well now Hildy thinks she’s dying, so she’s going to sneak off to the hospital! Ha ha, what’ll these wacky old people get up to next? Well, dying, presumably, at some point.

Dustin, 7/17/22

Dustin is a strip about the eternal war of the young against the old, but today it takes a little detour to comment on the eternal war of man against woman. It doesn’t have a joke about it, or even any vague wordplay, but I guess the change of pace is nice.

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Mary Worth, 7/13/22

Sorry to be BRIEFLY relatively serious on here but, let’s not forget that Jared and Dawn got together in the first place because she had been involved in a office romance with an older man who — oopsie! — turned out to be married, and Jared was there with his suave moves to pick up the pieces of Dawn’s shattered emotional state and claim him as his girlfriend/wounded baby bird. Fortunately for Dawn, she experiences emotional trauma all the time and has learned to bounce back quickly from it, so Jared had no choice to abandon his girlfriend who is capable of having fun and move on to a new one who has physical scars, not just emotional ones. Jared is a real creep in other words??? I hate him???? I want only bad things to happen to him?????

Funky Winkerbean, 7/13/22

Speaking of unpleasant people whom I dislike, the lesson that the Funkyverse is learning from Crankshaft’s untrammeled reign of terror is that the average newspaper comics reader wants to see irritated old men being unpleasant to people for no real reason, and … honestly, they’re probably not wrong!

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Gil Thorp, 7/11/22

Big news, everybody! Neal Rubin, who in my mind had been writing Gil Thorp forever but in fact started the gig just a few months before I launched this blog in 2004 (nervous, uncomfortable laughter), has written his last storyline and is passing the baton to new hands. It seems that the subtle “Be Seeing You” in Thursday’s strip wasn’t a reference to The Prisoner so much as a good-bye, though I could see how writing Gil Thorp might eventually come to feel like being trapped in a bizarre small town where full of weird people with inscrutable motives and nobody can give you a straight answer about what’s happening.

Anyway, the new writer is comic book vet Henry Barajas, who claims that the strip “holds a special place in my heart,” so it’s exciting to see what happens next! Day 1 is here to reassure us that this isn’t going to be some gritty reimagined Thorpiverse or anything. Gil is the coach, Gil is good, Gil is getting a major award in the middle of the summer, how dare you impugn Gil’s good name, ALL HAIL GIL

Mary Worth, 7/11/22

Speaking of impugning people’s good names, I’m afraid I misunderstood the original strip in which Jess appeared as saying that she had been the victim of domestic violence, when in fact she suffered an attack by a stranger in the course of a robbery. Does this make her resulting meet-cute with Jared less distressing? I’ve given it a lot of thought, and while the whole thing is still bad, I’m willing to downgrade it from “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO” to “eeeuuurrrggggghhhhh.” I’m not made of stone!

Marvin, 7/11/22

Really appreciate how much effort has been put into the blazing rays of the sun outside the window in today’s Marvin to make sure we understand that a smugly smiling Jeff is talking about getting “peace and quiet” by leaving his terrible son out in the summer heat, to die.