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Mary Worth, 2/14/18

Hmm, it seems that Mary, normally so firm in her boundaries, has internalized the pernicious idea that she has no right to her own bodily autonomy! Mere seconds after being visibly alarmed by Ted’s lingering frotteurist farewell and then essentially yelling him out the door, she already tries to normalize the experience in her own mind by dismissing Ted as a mere “character.” Who is going to raise her consciousness? Candidates are thin on the ground. Tobey? Dawn? My guess is Iris, who will return the favor Mary did in giving her permission to pursue Zak by explaining what it’s like being with a woke bae who knows all about consent and is also extremely hot and rich.

Dick Tracy, 2/14/18

Meanwhile, Dick Tracy is pulling away from showing us a literal alien invasion of earth and moving on to a much more exciting storyline: a man with goofy hair plans to purchase an off-brand Chili’s!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/14/18

Every Valentine’s Day, Loweezy has to indulge Snuffy’s kink of having sex in a boat, and she is not feeling it this year.

Six Chix, 2/14/18

HEY MAN MAYBE THE BICHON WOULDN’T HAVE LEFT YOU IF YOU HADN’T TRIED TO POISON HER

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Mary Worth, 2/13/18

Oh no, Mary was only into her hug from Ted when she thought it was a quick goodbye squeeze, and now it’s turning into something more and she’s not into it at all. I guess it was inevitable (it wasn’t inevitable, we could’ve stopped this at any time) that the strip would take on the current cultural moment of reckoning with sexual harassment and assault. I have to say that I’ve already spent way more time than I’m comfortable admitting trying to parse what exactly is supposed to be happening in panel two here. Since this is the chaste newspaper comics, it could just be Ted leaning in and closing his eyes and breathing in Mary’s scent and imagining what it would be like to be in a beautiful, committed relationship with her, but he also might be humping her leg.

Shoe, 2/13/18

Ha ha, heavy alcohol use can result in … tattoos! Tattoos and that’s it. No other health problems, no sir. This strip is heavily invested in the financial solvency of depressing fern bars, so we’re just going to leave it there.

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Dick Tracy, 2/12/18

Hey, so, remember last year when the xenophobic Congresswoman Bellowthon tried to pass a law restricting the rights of Lunarians and Lunarian-Americans, but then she got murdered and the legislation never went anywhere? You namby-pamby libs were probably pretty pleased about that, but now that the leader of this alien species is on Earth, smoking fine cigars with a prominent military-industrial complex CEO and casually mentioning that his people are abandoning “Moon Valley” and journeying to our world, planting secret colonies everywhere, you wish Congress had fully funded the Space Wall!

Marvin, 2/12/18

Maybe I spend too much time dwelling on the romance plots in Marvin. I mean, technically, they can be framed as stories about “the sex lives of babies,” but in reality they’re all pretty chaste, and the cartoon convention where infants and animals are given adult-level cognitive capabilities makes everything more or less on the level. Here’s the thing, though: half the time the punchline to these strips are about how Marvin, who has a girlfriend, smells like feces all the time? Because he shits his pants? And enjoys it? And it makes you realize, “Oh, this guy who has a girlfriend, he’s literally in infant. That’s bad!” Anyway, here’s another strip about diaper-wearing babies who poop themselves but also date each other, I guess!

Pluggers, 2/12/18

Pluggers know that a good way to sleep as long as you want in the morning is to unplug your clock so it doesn’t even tell you what time it is. And then when you do wake up, if you have a beard you can paw at it and go “Oh no! How long have I been asleep?” like you’re Rip Van Winkle. It’s a classic bit!

Mary Worth, 2/12/18

WHOA WHOA WHOA TED IS MOVING IN FOR A HUG AND MARY SEEMS PRETTY PLEASED ABOUT IT, THIS IS A SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT AND MAYBE ALL THIS TIME THEY HAVEN’T BEEN TALKING ABOUT “MARKETING” AT ALL???? STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER ROMANCE UPDATES!!!