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Mary Worth, 10/20/18

Most medical practitioners are, or should be, trained to understand the interpersonal dynamics of patients under their care, and recognize when someone may be there against their will, possibly as part of scenario of domestic violence. Usually people don’t just come out and say “It’s not my decision to be here!” but that’d be a pretty strong signal, in my opinion! Fortunately for Mary, our hapless shelter worker hasn’t been trained to notice these telltale signs. “What a nice old man,” she thinks about a person loudly proclaiming he’s been kidnapped. “I wonder how many puppies he’s going to leave with?”

Hagar the Horrible, 10/20/18

The central gimmick of Hagar the Horrible, of course, is that it reproduces the tropes of mid-20th century American middle-class life (which have been largely ossified into place in newspaper comics even though they don’t always reflect the reality of 2018) in a 9th or 10th-century Scandinavian setting, and one of those tropes is of men retreating to a bar to escape their wives. Anyway, today’s Hagar acknowledges that these bars are depressing places that monetize misery, which just sort of takes what I’ve always taken as the subtext and makes it explicit.

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Mary Worth, 10/17/18

Oh my god, it’s even better than I could’ve hoped: Mary is going to force emotional progress on Mr. Wynter by driving him to the pet shelter and browbeating him into adopting a pet while he begs her to stop! This is of course a terrible way to deal with a man’s sadness over a lost dog, simultaneously rushing the grieving process and belittling the specific bond he felt with his unique beloved pup. Honestly, though, my take is: why stop here? Why not just take things to their logical conclusion? Remember Saul’s devastation over the the loss of the love of his life? Why doesn’t Mary just drag him down to some adult education class that skews female — quilting? — and say “Maybe we can also cheer up a lonely widow or divorceé and make their day!” Saul will cling desperately to the side of the car, but with her persistence and surprising upper body strength, Mary will ensure that Saul loves again, whether he wants to or not.

Mark Trail, 10/17/18

A lot of people have been begging in the comments for me to check in on the Mark Trail storyline, which they’ve claimed is “exciting,” which, are you kidding me, it’s consisted entirely of Rusty and Mara having a weird, awkward conversation with “Backpack Guy” about which parts of this small Mexican town aren’t safe for two American tourist kids, one of whom is an obvious moron. However, I do of course need to present today’s strip to you, since it features the triumphant return of Extremely Cool Motorcycle Dude, who definitely seems to be from a different faction from Backpack Guy. Which of these two artifact-stealing-adjacent groups has Rusty and Mara’s best interests at heart? Is it neither of them? Can it please be neither of them? That’d be great.

Dick Tracy, 10/17/18

This Dick Tracy storyline has been remarkably short and low on character motivation — just a couple weeks after we’ve been introduced to Pauly and suddenly he’s a guy who’s always wanted to kill Dick Tracy, blah blah blah, now he and Dick are firing pistols at each other at close range and making no attempt to dive for cover or anything, etc., etc. Mostly I want to point out that Pauly looks like you put Dick and Sam together in the transporter pod from The Fly and turned the Color Palette knob all the way to “brown.”

Family Circus, 10/17/18

Today’s Family Circus features the Keane Kids staring at their parents’ increasingly passionate embrace, commenting upon, but not quite comprehending, the difference between the erotic bonds between the two adults and the filial bonds between parents and children. It’s the best panel they’ve presented us with in years!

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/15/18

Oh, snap, did our man Jordan steal some valor? We learned yesterday that he lost his legs to an IED in Iraq not while “on patrol,” since he wasn’t in a combat unit, but rather while he was walking to a market to buy vegetables, because he was an Army Food Services Specialist. You’d think most people would be perfectly willing to honor anyone wounded by enemy action in a combat zone, and that the soldiers he fed would’ve deemed him a hero for risking his life to help supply them with fresh food and not MREs or industrial flash-frozen meals shipped from the States. But, whatever, Jordan just wants to give people a “good story,” and it makes me suspicious that the truth is even further removed from the “real” tale he’s been telling his fiance. Like, in a month we’re going to find out he wasn’t in the army at all, but actually was just a line chef at a restaurant who had to run to the supermarket to get some more spinach during the late dinner rush, and accidentally slipped and fell into the into the industrial floor buffer. Then a week after that we’ll find out the restaurant was an Olive Garden and he was actually picking up more of the Secret Olive Garden Ingredient (Grade B butter).

Mary Worth, 10/15/18

I don’t want to tell Mary how to do her job (“job”), but if you’re trying to woo an emotionally closed-off shut-in back into the world by giving him a specific task to complete that matches his skills, maybe just spend some time with him doing that task and making neutral chit-chat instead of bombarding him with feelings talk the moment you trick him out of his apartment? This is the speech for when he realizes he’s enjoyed the day in spite of himself, not when he’s still in the car on the way over! He’s not going to come out again for another year.

Six Chix, 10/15/18

One thing I really hate is characters explaining things to each other that they already know, so I’m going to assume that the vampiress on the left has only recently been turned into an undead ghoul by the vampiress on the right. Our newbie has finally gotten over the initial shock and is starting to really lean into the aesthetic, but still hasn’t really that the one thing that’s truly her long hoped for ticket to Instagram stardom is also the one thing that makes selfies physically impossible.

Family Circus, 10/15/18

My favorite part of this cartoon, in which literally everybody is devastated at not being able to go on a trip to New York with Big Daddy Keane (which, why? he isn’t that great) is that Billy is wearing a “Good On Ya Mate” t-shirt he got from his canonically Australian mother. Ha ha, Billy doesn’t know the difference between New York and Australia! The only geography he understands is “here” and “somewhere else.” He’s a moron!

Slylock Fox, 10/15/18

I’m not sure why Slylock felt like he needed so many accomplices for his grim little sting operation here. I do love how pleased Patty looks — maybe she feels like, having gotten a social invitation from Slylock, she’s moving up in the world! — and how tense everyone else looks, as they all wait for this desperate addict to sneak off to the bathroom, open the medicine cabinet, and try to pocket the, uh, “toothpaste,” yeah, that’s exactly what Patty’s been stealing from the town’s medicine cabinets, toothpaste. Only our li’l pig pal is completely ignoring the fraught emotional texture of the evening. He’s just eatin’ dinner! He loves dinner! It’s weird that dinner’s been served in the living room off of a coffee table, but guess what: he doesn’t care!

Spider-Man, 10/15/18

“Look who escaped the chopper via their own personal jetpacks!” “Kingpin and the Golden Claw!” “Yeah man, that was a rhetorical question. They were the only other people in the chopper. It couldn’t have been anyone else. Is this … is this how other people feel when they’re talking to me? Hoo boy.”