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Mary Worth, 6/21/17

Well, I guess it’s not exactly a surprise that this plotline is going to climax with these two busty ladies getting into a no-holds-barred catfight for Derek’s smoky love, and while I think that’s a bit of a cliche, I have to admit I enjoy the direction panel two is taking it. Decades of girl-on-girl fights over men in movies and on TV have trained you to expect that both ladies would grab at each other’s hair the moment this argument escalated from swearing to violence. Instead, as the rain starts pouring out of the dark sky over the endless ocean, Katie looks wide-eyed at Esme’s fury, and leans back over the guardrail. She’s leaning away from her rival’s outstretched hands, of course, but something about her expression seems to carry both epiphany and resignation. “Has it come to this?” she thinks. “Do I need to debase myself in this way, just to keep hold of someone who’s chosen another path? What if I just let gravity take me, let the water rush together over my head? There are worse ways to go than in the arms of the sea.”

Pluggers, 6/21/17

I don’t care if you’ve been a plugger’s doctor for years. I don’t care if you’ve been married to a plugger for your entire adult life. If you don’t understand that for him the whole point of drinking coffee is to ride that buzz until it eats him out from the inside, then you don’t understand him at all.

Dick Tracy, 6/21/17

YOU DIDN’T WANT TO RISK ANYONE’S SAFETY BY STARTING A GUNFIGHT???

WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH DICK TRACY

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Mary Worth, 6/20/17

Oooh, it’s a tense nighttime confrontation on the cruise deck! I guess since the previous nighttime strip the moon has now set or the giant light on the top of the ship has been turned off or something, resulting in this all-blue scene, which was presumably filmed using day for night techniques. Anyhoo, it’s fun to watch ladies attempt to establish firm relationship boundaries and also displace their feelings about male misconduct onto each other, here in the dark!

Hi and Lois, 6/20/17

Shoutout to Hi and Lois for catching up with the times and allowing its adult characters to acknowledge the existence of emojis! Still, it’s good that it maintains some of the classic comics iconography that we all know and love, like corporate CEOs who preside over the the minutia of their company’s day-to-day business from a monogrammed throne.

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Hagar the Horrible, 6/18/17

There’s a lot of backstory that has to go into making this gag work. First Hagar has to decide that his life is worthy of being commemorated in a long tale, and then, despite his canonical illiteracy, he has to choose to abandon the traditional orally transmitted poetry of his Viking ancestors in favor of a written biography. Then he has to strong-arm Lucky Eddy, who is himself illiterate, into learning letter-craft and then writing Hagar’s life story down. Then Hagar has to ask which parts of the book are bad for Helga to read, because, as his crude X indicates, he himself still refuses to learn the southern art of writing. Which Helga … has? There’s a lot going on here, is what I’m saying.

Mary Worth, 6/18/17

There is as ever a lot of inappropriate bold-lettering in Mary Worth, but I dearly hope that Esme’s all-bolded final speech balloon indicates that she’s shouting her dialogue at the top of her lungs down the deck. “I’M LEAVING THE INVITATION OPEN, DEREK! THE SEX INVITATION! YOU KNOW, FOR EXTRAMARITAL SEX! FOR WHEN YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT CHEATING ON YOUR WIFE! CABIN 1122! COME BY ANY TIME! TO HAVE SEX WITH ME!”

Hi and Lois, 6/18/17

Guys, I’m … I’m starting to worry about Hi.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/18/17

[a few weeks later, Kelly sees a reference to “the LGBT community” and is moved to look up what the “B” stands for] hey, wait a minute