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Mary Worth, 6/4/22

Whenever Jared appears in this strip, he inspires intense loathing in both me and, based on your comments, all of you, and one of the fascinating things about Mary Worth is that it’s never clear if that’s the intended effect. Like, normal people recognize Jared as a needy, petulant, emotionally manipulative “nice guy,” but are we supposed to view him as such, or is he actually just an unappreciated sad sack worthy of love, and worthy of Dawn’s love in particular? Well, I kind of feel like today’s strip, in which Dawn goes clubbing with strange men like a whore while Jared gently consoles a victim of domestic violence, answers the question, and I’m excited that we’re all going to get the outcome we’ve been begging for (Dawn and Jared breaking up) but only because Dawn isn’t good enough for him.

Gil Thorp, 6/4/22

Wow, huh, so we’ve spent this entire spring focused on Gregg’s little blindness problem and finally we have a solution to it: get better glasses. Glasses, everybody! Why didn’t we think of that? You know, weirdly there hasn’t been a girl’s softball B-plot this year, and I think it may be because the Lady Mudlarks are too smart to be in this strip.

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Mary Worth, 6/3/22

You know, Dawn, you rally ought to listen to your friend Cathy. She’s got a lot of common sense! Thanks to faithful reader Rita Lake who dug up some old links, we now know that she’s really matured a lot since 2011, when she said Dawn was lucky to have Wilbur as a dad, a perfectly insane statement even when delivered in the context of Cathy’s dad being dead. She’s also really matured a lot — and by “matured a lot” I mean “completely physically transformed” — since the time she interrupted Dawn’s sexually obsessive thoughts about her art history prof back in 2015. It’s possible that this isn’t the same Cathy? Maybe Dawn only allows herself to have one female friend at a time, and they always have to be named Cathy, but other than that she’s open to a lot of different possibilities.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/3/22

“I mean, this guy prescribed Cosentyx® for me like a pro. I didn’t even have to ask about it like they said in the TV ad, he already had a bunch of pens and notepads and stuff around the office with the name all over them. It’s … mostly cleared up now, I guess? Anyway, he seems like the kind of guy who could handle a delicate hostage negotiation, based on that one interaction I had with him.”

Beetle Bailey, 6/3/22

Look, I don’t pretend to be entirely sure what’s going on here, but the important thing is that Sarge is finally going to pay for his crimes of cartoonishly overwrought violence, in prison.

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Gil Thorp, 6/2/22

So Gregg wore his dumb mask, the opposing team figured out he was blind and peppered him with bunts, and now he’s real depressed and giving up even the pretense that he’s a teenager. “Look at my hair!” he shouts. “I’m an old man! The only reason I’d go to the park is to yell at the young women about how they should dress more decently in public!”

Mary Worth, 6/2/22

Speaking of dressing indecently, oh my goodness, after a dull few days when Dawn and Jared endlessly rehashed his intense insecurity about the fact that she looked at another boy at the zoo and coming to what seemed like a boring consensus about how it was nothing and nobody should fret about it, Dawn is now going to Da Club behind Jared’s back, because their relationship is in fact extremely unhealthy! The last time we saw Dawn out at what I assume is Santa Royale’s hottest and noisiest goth club, she was there with her art history professor and surprised her dad’s ex while wearing this truly incredible outfit. Tonight’s ensemble, with just a hint of bondage around the décolletage, is somewhat more subtle, but I still appreciate the occasional forays into Dawn Fashion to help me keep up with what the kids are into these days. Anyway, does her friend … have a nose? A whole nose? It looks like she might not, right? And her name is Cathy? Hmmmmmmm?

Funky Winkerbean, 6/2/22

The joke here is that the boy waited till after graduation to ask out the girl so there’s no time for them to really form a relationship before they go away to college, but I think this strip would be funnier if she actually just decided she didn’t like him and instead of politely riding out the next few hours is telling him repeatedly that there will be no date #2.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/2/22

Oh, man, I certainly hope they don’t call Rex until the Sunday strip, because we’re gonna need a lot of panels for his ponderous, exasperated sigh.