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Mary Worth, 5/22/20

I had sort of been hoping that Mary Worth would never do a coronavirus pandemic plot, that it would just remain my happy place forever when the worst thing we had to worry about was how many mai tais Wilbur’s had, but now that Mary and Dawn are moving on from “Cheating’s fine, honestly, most of the time there isn’t really any hard feelings” to “You know who the real heroes are? Doctors, and nurses, and whatever it is Jared does, I’m not clear on it exactly but he definitely wears scrubs and works at the hospital,” I worry that we’re headed in that direction. I’ll allow it only if Jared succumbs to COVID, allowing Dawn to weep bereft pandemic tears for months.

Shoe, 5/22/20

Despite how long I’ve written about comics, there are still parts of the creative process I don’t understand. In Shoe, for instance, what factors determine the punchlines that get Goggle Eyes of Horror and the ones that get Heavy Lids and Undereye Bags of Despair?

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Gil Thorp, 5/18/20

Oh, wow, it turns out Mike “The Mayor” hasn’t just been suspended or kicked off the team for his knifecrime; he’s been expelled from school, which has him understandably soured on the American education system! Still, I don’t like the sneering way he labels a woman who I assume is his mom as a mere “real estate appraiser” unfit to deliver insights into Southern Gothic literature or whatever. You can learn a lot from a real estate appraiser! Obviously they use a lot of applied math in their job, and they’re mostly independent small business people with a lot of practical knowledge of what that entails. They also are pretty attuned to the nuances of the real estate market, and how it’s connected to both macroeconomic and socioeconomic conditions — and because they go inside a lot of people’s homes while they’re still living in them, they can tell you quite a bit about the diversity of human private lives. That’s gotta be good for, what, a week or two of home-schooling, until Gil grandstands at a school board meeting and Mike’s back in class, stabbing whoever he wants?

Dennis the Menace, 5/18/20

The gap between “Margaret has a weird romantic obsession with Dennis” and “All the things that are ‘annoying’ about Margaret are actually future marketable skills, whereas all the things that are annoying about Dennis are actually annoying” has never been greater than it is today. Margaret is sitting there with a Bluetooth headset and a laptop because, I assume, she has an actual white-collar job now, whereas Dennis isn’t even making a joke here, he’s just painfully stupid. Painfully stupid. And by Margaret’s face, she may have finally wised up.

Mary Worth, 5/18/20

“No resistance on his part? Or did he stay behind enemy lines, plotting with confederates, importing weapons with the help of British spies, occasionally assassinating Gestapo officers, and preparing for the day when the rest of the Allies and an army of colonial troops would arrive on his shores, and your relationship would once again be liberated from the boche, who I guess is Jared, in this scenario?

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Dustin, 5/16/20

Ugh, I spent way too much time trying to figure out what the context for this even is. Like, she met him at the Dollar Store, where she was disgusted by his economic prospects, and then she … agreed to go on a date with him? Invited him to this party, or perhaps accepted an invite to the same? Happened to run into him at a party and took the opportunity to talk smack about him within what is clearly earshot? Damn it I need the backstory here

Mary Worth, 5/16/20

We must truly be at the final, blessed end of the Dawn-Jared story, because we’re being shown the pinnacle of romantic love in the Worthiverse: Dr. Jeff and Mary, a happy, devoted couple, if you forget all the times that Mary rejected his marriage proposals, or the time Mary put the moves on a local city councilman at his own mother’s funeral, or the time she almost up and moved to New York to live with her handsome Broadway crush, or the time she conveniently forgot Jeff was allergic to cats. Truly, Dawn and Jared have such bliss to aspire to!