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Family Circus, 3/25/22

I very distinctly remember the moment more than four years ago when I read this article about the “raw water” movement in the New York Times because it drove me very nearly to despair. Basically, starting around 150 years ago humanity began to achieve something that would’ve been deemed near-miraculous by any other civilization in history — safe-to-drink water delivered at incredibly low cost to almost every home — and now that we’re a couple generations removed from anyone who remembers what life was like before that, people are instead selling unsterilized spring water for $15 a gallon and saying stuff like “They’re putting in fluoride — call me a conspiracy theorist, but it’s a mind-control drug” to reporters. It’s bad! It’s real bad! On the other hand, if it’s gonna result in Jeffy and Billy getting killed by cholera, I guess I can’t complain too much.

Mary Worth, 3/25/22

Oh my god, this is too good. This is perfect. I love everything happening here. I love Cal dropping “have you tried just not thinking about your problems” like it’s sage advice, and I really love that Helen has busted out binoculars for her Toby-spying needs. I’m assuming Helen isn’t, like, an ornithology professor (because I assume most community colleges don’t have ornithology departments) so she brought those in to work specifically for looking at Toby’s brazen flirtations from afar. Who knows what further madness her obsession with cock-blocking Toby will lead her to! Keep it up, Helen!

Shoe, 3/25/22

The fact that the creative team behind Shoe thinks that “being an artist” is a ticket to financial independence reveals a lot frankly surprising information about how lucrative Shoe is.

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Blondie, 3/24/22

This is not the first time I’ve griped about this, but at one point unseen off-screen characters in Blondie used to be named things like “the Glambasters,” just for fun, but now they all have to have incredibly on-the-nose names that explicitly tell you what their deal within the comic is, like “the Clockers” who hate it if you’re late or, in this case, “Winona Braggart,” who likes to brag. Where has the creative energy that used to be put into the names gone? If today’s strip is any indication, it’s going into incredibly detailed drawings of curled up cold-cuts, which, while on-brand for this strip and no doubt of great interest to its readership, really saddens me.

Mary Worth, 3/24/22

Look, I’ve never said that Toby is a genius, exactly, but it seems like it should be obvious even to her that a mostly treeless hillside facing your workplace’s enormous plate-glass windows is the last place you’d want to pick for a makeout session with a student that your coworkers are already criticizing you for flirting with. Just walk to the other side of the hill! Think for once in your life!

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Crankshaft, 3/21/22

Pam. Pam. Your father is an enthusiastic gardener who loves to order stuff from the Bean’s End catalog. That’s a giant bag labelled “Bean’s End Mulch.” Why on earth do you feel like you need to ask what that is? You know what it is! It’s a goddamn bag of mulch! Asking this question can only set up a terrible joke, or at minimum extend a conversation with Crankshaft. Do you want that? Do you think any of us want to watch that? C’mon!

Dick Tracy, 3/21/22

Never let it be said that Dick Tracy is a character without nuance! For instance, you’d think a tough guy cop would be irritated when his foppish theater pal wants him to take time out of his busy work day to come see a celebrity impersonator he plans to represent. But no, Dick’s fine with that. It’s only a problem when the new talent parodies a cacophonic singer who almost killed him! That’s the line you shouldn’t cross with him, no matter what.

Mary Worth, 3/21/22

Not sure why you would’ve ever doubted that Ian’s colleagues all dislike him, but today’s strip pretty much confirms that Ian’s colleagues all dislike him.