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Dustin, 9/21/22

A thing about doing a comic strip every day for years and years is that keeping up with whatever “high concept” you used to sell the thing in the first place gets exhausting, so eventually you just start having characters say whatever jokes you or your gag writers can come up with or have maybe heard from someone else, ignoring more and more frequently the fact that they’re birds or whatever. Dustin’s been around for more than a decade now, so hopefully we’re getting closer and closer to the blessed moment where it stops being a Millennial vs. Boomer battle and just features its various generic characters driving around and reciting forwarded email jokes to one another.

Gasoline Alley, 9/21/22

Wow, it’s really sad that sexually aggressive frog-demons go unpunished in this strip, while we’re treated to images of innocent trees screaming in agony as they burn to death!

Gil Thorp, 9/21/22

Oh snap! Heather Burns is in her first week on the job as Marjie Ducey’s replacement and she’s already shaking up the staid Milford Star’s ways by live-tweeting the game! This would be a real threat to Marty Moon’s radio show if he still had a radio show, but I’m pretty sure he’s just up there in a peach crate, yelling into a headset that isn’t connected to anything.

Hi and Lois, 9/21/22

Wait, who the hell was Thirsty texting? His only friend is Hi and he hates his wife, so I don’t … ohhhh, he was in the bathroom with his phone “texting,” got it.

Mary Worth, 9/21/21

No, Wilbur! This woman works with dogs all day, so you can’t use dogs to flirt with her! Plus you don’t even have a dog yet! You’re swinging into action too soon! Bad Wilbur! Bad! [whacks Wilbur’s nose with a rolled-up newspaper]

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Mary Worth, 9/20/21

Oh my god, everybody, it’s really happening, where by “it” I specifically mean that Wilbur is going to go to the animal shelter to get a dog for all the wrong reasons! Not sure if he’s going to lead with “I’m a real piece of shit and my dumb old neighbor says one of these mongrels will make me marginally more tolerable” or “I’m horny and I hear ladies like guys with dogs,” but I hopefully we’re going to learn that they do not, in fact, give out pets to just anybody.

Marvin, 9/20/21

I have to admit that I find the image in panel one, with a very tiny baby just sitting there outside Marvin’s front door, very funny! The fact he’s alone out there is part of it. He looks like he’s too young to walk or even crawl, and so you have to assume that his parents just plopped him down there and then abandoned him, possibly forever. Anyway, Bitsy probably isn’t going to maul him to death, but if he wanted to, who’s going to stop him? An adult? No adults care about these babies! If the dog doesn’t get them, something else will!

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Gil Thorp, 9/15/21

[clears throat] [extremely Beavis from Beavis and Butt-Head voice] FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! [takes a long, deep breath, representing the years 2016, 2017, and 2018, when the annual Milford bonfire was mysteriously absent] FIRE! FIRE!

Whew, it’s bonfire time again, everybody, guaranteeing a robust grain harvest and fewer barren wombs among the townsfolk! Every year we learn a little something new about the bonfire, and today’s panel one shows us that, assuming the student body doesn’t shlep all those logs by hand to some open field somewhere, it takes place a lot closer to the school itself than I would’ve guessed. Legend has it that Milford will only win a state championship if the flame is allowed to burn the building to the ground!

Funky Winkerbean, 9/15/21

One of the running jokes in the early days of this strip, when it was mostly fun gags about a bunch of goofy teens, was that Les Moore wielded a machine gun as part of his hall monitor duties. I keep waiting in the post-Turn-to-Grim Funkyverse for this to get retconned into the result of some awful school shooting, and that hasn’t happened yet, but until then I’ll console myself with “Majorette Holly’s flesh was a mass of scar tissues due to ever-more-dangerous baton tricks her deranged mother forced her to perform.” I guess today’s colorist glanced at the text and thought, “Oh, these pictures are all supposed to be close-ups of burn wounds, huh,” which is a nice touch.

Daddy Daze, 9/15/21

Look, man, I spent several hours with a couple babies this past weekend and they didn’t seem happy at all! They cried multiple times just because they had to go to the bathroom or were hungry or whatever. I mean, I had to go to the bathroom and was hungry too, but I managed to hold it together, for once!

Mary Worth, 9/15/21

WILBUR WHEN A CAT PISSES IN HIS SPOT ON HIS GIRLFRIEND’S COUCH: Animals are bad! They interfere with me having sex!

WILBUR WHEN HE HEARS A GNOMISH OLD MAN MET A NICE WOMAN JUST BECAUSE HE OWNS A DOG: Animals can help you get sex? Go on, Mary, I’m very interested.