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Marvin, 1/26/18

As I’ve noted at least once in this space, there was a Sally Forth storyline in, I think, the mid-to-late ’00s when there was a flashback to Ted and Sally meeting in college and Sally is wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt. Since I had been reading Sally Forth since I was Hillary’s age, her parents were canonically the same age as my parents, so the idea that Sally in college liked a band that was hip among my own cohort was a shattering blow to everything I held dear about my own age/hipness/relationship with adulthood/etc. But that was years ago, and I’ve long made peace with both the concept of comic-book time and my own ongoing slide into middle age, so I’m not alarmed to learn that the super-square parents of the syndicated comics’ worst baby attended a concert of a band who had a monster hit song 26 years ago, even though liking that band had been a marker of a certain avant-garde sensibility at the time, back when I was in college. Anyway, the sting is mitigated a bit by the fact that the dialogue here was obviously written by a space alien or near-sapient computer program that tried to imagine how a human would describe going to a rock concert, and came up with “screaming” (?) until your “jaw is sore” (??), which is technically correct but also profoundly off.

Mary Worth, 1/26/18

Oh, it looks like five-term Massachusetts Senator John Kerry Ted Miller’s boredom with retirement now has an outlet: turning Mary Worth into the muffin queen! You’d think that the current playing field for baked goods — dominated by massive industrial bakeries at one end and gourmet local boutique pastry shops at the other — represents a market that has pretty much shaken out, but Ted, who used to be a salesman of some indeterminate nature at one point, thinks Mary and her kitchen can produce enough lucrative muffins to make both him and her (but not, pointedly, Dr. Jeff) wealthy. Mary’s already posing for the label in the first panel!

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Mark Trail, 1/23/18

Immediately after his giraffe encounter, Rusty ran home to tell his adoptive parents about it, only to be berated at length that you’d have to be a crazy person to say you saw a giraffe in the forest and you must be dreaming or hallucinating like that time with the dinosaurs, so you should stop insisting you saw giraffes or you’re going to have to go live in the crawl space again. Of course, we know that there’s a whole dang circus loose out there, and so I sincerely hope that Mark, maintaining that smug, know-it-all facial expression, steps outside to prove to Rusty that Lost Forest is giraffe-free and is then immediately mauled by a lion.

Mary Worth, 1/23/18

Ha ha, is 2004 Democratic Party presidential nominee and former Secretary of State John Kerry Ted Miller going to steal Mary away from his old friend Dr. Jeff, right in front him? Notice that Mary is sure to welcome Ted “to my home,” emphasizing that she has long refused to marry, move in with, or commit to Dr. Jeff in any way.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/23/18

Rex is scowling in panel one, but thoughtfully, indicating that he might be open to allowing this Maoist self-criticism session to mollify him. Unfortunately, the Marches have made the decision to deploy youth slang, which he’s not going to appreciate at all.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/23/18

One of the things I’ve resigned myself to kind of enjoying is that printed matter that appears in Snuffy Smith is spelled in the same eye dialect used in the word balloons. Still, today’s strip is horrifying because it prompted me, unbidden, to imagine a context in which one of the characters might say the world “ballz.” Like, “Lukey, th’ next time we’re int’mite, I’m gonna ask Loweezy t’ tickle my ballz!” If I have to think it, you have to read it, which is, I suppose, this blog’s mission statement.

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Mary Worth, 1/22/18

Welp, it looks like our “Wilbur gets scam-dumped and then cockblocked by a hot rich millennial” storyline somehow managed to end with Wilbur strutting through a park alone and deluding himself about what a great dad he is, so it’s time for a new plot! And it looks like it’s going to feature Mary’s boyfriend Dr. Jeff after an awfully long absence. Presumably he’ll be around just long enough to introduce his friend (note: Dr. Jeff does not, to my knowledge, have any friends) Ted Miller, who’s quite a character, which 100% means he’s going to be an insufferable nightmare who will throw Mary’s world, and the Charterstone community in general, into chaos. I’m excited!

Beetle Bailey, 1/22/18

Also starting a new plotline this Monday: Beetle Bailey! We begin in media res, with the backstory on what catastrophe has left much of the world outside Camp Swampy a patchwork of uninhabitable “contaminated zones” that the military must enter on mysterious and dangerous missions presumably being filled in at some point later in the week.

Blondie, 1/22/18

Ha ha, uh, remember a couple of weeks ago when I made a joke about Elmo spending all his time at the Bumsteads’ because of his volatile, violent home life? The best part here is how Blondie just kind of stares at Elmo silently as she lets him in, as if she’s gobsmacked and just now putting together his tragic backstory.