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Gil Thorp, 11/18/19

Well, weeks after making the mistake of trying to blow the whistle to Milford’s “mainstream” (i.e., Thorp-friendly) press, Chet is doing what he should’ve done in the first place, which is talk to Marty Moon, preferably in a context where Marty can get as drunk as possible with a non-Marty person paying for the drinks. So the setup is right, but the execution is botched. Marty says he’s listening but you can see in panel three that he’s already tuning out Chet’s blather about “two-a-days” and “Sam Finn” or whatever. C’mon, Chet! Lead with the scissors-throwing! Everyone loves a good scissors-throwing!

Family Circus, 11/18/19

“Daddy” may be back at the help of the Family Circus, but the layers of narrative artifice on display during “Billy (age 7)’s run” are still present. Dolly prays to the Christian God, but He does not exist within the Circus’s circle; the Father and Creator is downstairs, watching football. (Of course, in real life, this God is dead, and in-panel reality is sustained by Jeffy, depicted here as His prophet.)

Mary Worth, 11/18/19

Crouching in your office chair, airing your hairy legs out and pressing an ice pack gingerly against one side of your head doesn’t exactly scream “patented hangover cure” to me, but I guess Wilbur’s the expert! I don’t want to say every plotline in Mary Worth should involve Wilbur getting dumped or otherwise romantically devastated, but, like, every fourth one or so? That’d be great.

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Pluggers, 11/15/19

“What would a young one think a ‘telephone book’ is? Probably a catalog of smartphones — that is, a printed multipage document, filled with pictures and pricing information for various models of smartphones, which gets delivered to you in the mail or you pick up at a cell phone store. Once you’ve picked the smartphone you want, you’d call up the company to buy it, or maybe fill out a form from the back of the catalog and send a check along with it. I’m sure this is a real concept that kids are familiar with, and that they associate with the phrase ‘telephone book.’” –A plugger, apparently

Mary Worth, 11/15/19

Hard to know what to even say that could add to this objectively perfect strip. I guess what really makes it work is that it viscerally makes us understand what it’s like for Estelle to have a nightmare about Wilbur siring four identical Wilburbabies with her, because after seeing that second panel we’ll all be seeing those same Wilburbabies in our own nightmares tonight, and every other night until death finally takes us.

The Lockhorns, 11/15/19

“So, did you bring a dish? I said it was pot luck. You know what that means, right? A meal where people bring dishes to share? It’s a pretty standard English word.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/14/19

It’s actually been kind of amazing over the years to watch Les get lavished with more and more praise and material benefits even as his personality veers further from “irritating” into “completely insufferable.” This week, we’re finally getting the closure we’ve wanted about Bull’s suicide arc, and that closure is naturally all about Les. Remember, in the early, “fun” days of the strip, Bull was a vicious bully who made ever day of Les’s life a living hell; ever since the various time jumps, the strip has tried to retcon it so that secretly Bull liked and respected Les all along, even when they were kids, and Linda has invited Les over to make sure he knows this. Why, Bull had even been donating money to Lisa’s Legacy Fund all this time, unbeknownst to Les, even though they were friends and colleagues for years as adults and there was no real reason for Bull not to tell him, and Les is also presumably in charge of all the finances of Lisa’s Legacy Fund so he would’ve known anyway. But still, what really counts is that Linda is spending her mourning making sure Les knows how beloved and respected he, personally, is.

And hey, you might’ve noticed from that old strip linked above that way back before time jump #2 Bull and Linda were talking about adopting a child! Well, after the time jump, they had in fact adopted her and she was a teen, and we haven’t seen her in years and years and years but probably she’s … dealing with her father’s death in her own way? Her response isn’t as important as Les’s, of course, but it might be an interesting part of this storyline to explore, just a suggestion!

Family Circus, 11/14/19

One Family Circus narrative conceit I really enjoy is when Billy (age 7) subs for Daddy as the artist for the Family Circus. There’s just so many narrative layers involved! First, it acknowledges that Big Daddy Keane within the world of the strip is both a character and the universe’s creator; then, of course, there’s the fact that real Bil Keane passed away years ago, and that the strip is now drawn not by Glen Keane (the real-life Billy analogue) but rather the grown-up Jeffy, pretending to be his father pretending to be his brother. Today, he’s really leaning into the fact that his version of his father’s version of his brother (age 7) sure sucks at drawing the Family Circus! Look at this chump’s hackwork! He can’t even draw a circle properly! He’s going to ruin the family business! Probably it should be handed down to one of the other sons, I guess?

Mary Worth, 11/14/19

“Mary Worth ill-advised wedding dream sequence” is a phrase that I never knew until this moment that I so badly wanted to see acted out. The giant question mark obviously represents Estelle’s questions about her future with Wilbur, which somehow haven’t been answered quite definitively by a week of drunken antics, but I really hope that the door pops open tomorrow and we see The Riddler, there to perform the ceremony.

Pluggers, 11/14/19

You’re a plugger if you refuse to give your wife this one thing, just one thing, just dress nicely just this once, no matter how happy it would make her.