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Spider-Man, 7/9/18

How would rumors like that spread, anyway? “Listen, there may or may not be this one guy, dunno who, and he fights a hypothetical sect called The Hand! They’re famous for keeping their activities, identity, and their very existence completely secret: nobody’s ever heard of them, and everybody knows it! Maybe this guy fights them with his hand? No way to tell! Don’t hold me to any of this, OK? Pass it on!”

Mary Worth, 7/9/18

Hey, you two, I have nothing but respect for your respective sobrieties; Tommy, you have apparently turned your life around yet again, way to go. But before you go getting all boldface, accept that maybe not every waitress is on fire for details of your personal journeys? Think of “Just order your damn drink” as a thirteenth step or something.

Judge Parker, 7/9/18

(Sigh)

No, Neddy, they didn’t — they asked where you were. Ronnie Huerta invented that whole drug thing after the fact. Are you on drugs or something?

Haha Sam is shopping online for a matching lamp. Maybe the strip is so deeply invested in desk lamps because the lawyers don’t have any actual work to put on their desks?

Crankshaft, 7/9/18

♫ Love is the drug got a hook in Ralph! ♬

The only real question is how soon this ends badly.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Dick Tracy, 7/4/18

Citizen! Share your Fourth of July with this steel-jawed law enforcer, literal red-headed stepchild, and alien halfbreed, arrayed before a monochrome American flag! Comply!

Crankshaft, 7/4/18

All week long, Ralph has been flirting with both myocardial infarction and Sandy here, to the dulcet strains of jazz classic I Can’t Get Started — doubly ironic because even if he does, there remains the matter of finishing.

P.S. In California we have fires, and our air really does look like that. I don’t know Ohio’s excuse.

Mary Worth, 7/4/18

Tommy and Brandy emerge from some kind of hostage drama, and the foreshadowing is thick: Tommy will demand sex on threat of murder, and Brandy will gladly opt for death: “Humanity, schumanity — a girl’s got to have standards!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/4/18

Every year around this time I become insufferable on the subject of fireworks. Growing up, we had the good, real kind — the ones that fly, flash, and most of all explode. I once got arrested for pitching an M-80 into the lagoon at a public park, and I can’t say I regret it.

But now the runup to every Fourth of July brings a week of TV-news moralizing about how awful fireworks are and police BS about how THIS TIME the department will be REALLY SERIOUS about enforcement. The spokespeople are hilarious: “Yes of course we will totally send our officers charging into drunken parties in private backyards, risking their lives to keep lawbreakers from injuring themselves. It’s our top priority. Youuuuuu betcha.”

But the highlight is the late news on the Fourth itself, when every station stops their tut-tutting and backdrops the news desk with a live feed of the Oakland skyline — a lacework of smoke trails silhouetted against a sky lit bright as day. AMERICA, dammit!

Still and all, I wouldn’t put explosives in the hands of Hootin’ Holler’s most belligerent drunk.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Mary Worth, 6/26/18

Iris is right to be worried about guys who rush in, Tommy! Remember when she first moved to Charterstone and some guy made an overture at her at a pool party, and then after one date (if you can call it a date when you bring your daughter along with you) he was all like “I think the lady and I are going to be spending a lot of time together, mu ha ha ha!” and then one thing leads to another and suddenly he’s lurking in the bushes furiously wondering “Is he a professional? Or into illegal activities?” Anyway, take it slow is what we’re trying to get at, buddy!

Beetle Bailey, 6/26/18

It’s easy to project onto Beetle a a vague anti-militaristic sentiment, just because he seems so very uninterested in performing his duties as a soldier, but it turns out he loves the idea of bombing cities into rubble! Doesn’t feel any moral twinges about it at all! He’s just extremely lazy.

Blondie, 6/26/18

Dagwood definitely just agreed to have his organs harvested, right? Anyway, joke’s on Mr. Dithers or whoever had their eyes on his healthy young heart and liver: everything in his body cavity is like 90 percent deli meat at this point.