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Mary Worth, 4/12/17

Panel one of today’s Mary Worth is a great illustration of why I love Mary Worth and soap opera strips in general, which I realize makes me sound insane but isn’t it nice that we’ve all found each other, friends? Anyway, what makes it great is that it offers a deep dive into the midset of someone who’s deciding to sit down. “Hmm, I’ve been holding my body vertically and using my legs to move from place to place for some time … but what if I were to lower myself onto one of these pieces of furniture, which seem to have been explicitly designed for that purpose? Why, it seems obvious that I’d expend less energy that way, albeit at the price of remaining stationary for a limited period of time! What do I have to lose?”

Beetle Bailey, 4/12/17

The art in Beetle Bailey has always been, uh, let’s say deliberately simplistic. This means that Miss Buxley’s standard-issue Little Black Dress is actually just an excuse to draw an hourglass figure and then fill in most of it from neck to thighs with the paintcan tool in Photoshop. But for today’s joke (“joke”) to work (“work”), she needed to looks stunning. More stunning than usual. And so, in dedication to their craft (“craft”), the employees of Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC have taught themselves to draw cleavage. Heroic efforts all around here!

Dick Tracy, 4/12/17

Meanwhile, over in Dick Tracy, there are, uh, two ladies named Margie, with ironic nicknames, and … the programs for the convention are here???? I will bring you more reports as this fraught situation develops.

Gil Thorp, 4/12/17

Oh God … her hand … with each high five it has absorbed the life force of the hands it strikes against … growing more powerful … larger … already it’s big enough to reach from her forehead to her sternum … and nothing can stop it … nothing … oh God it’s already too late

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Mary Worth, 4/11/17

It’s a good thing that Mary and Toby aren’t the kind of friends and travel companions who feel like they have to do everything together, because they obviously have very different interests. Mary, for instance, enjoys looking out over the waves thinking quietly to herself, “I love the sea! You know, in the abstract. I’m not going to swim in it or anything. It’s full of monsters!” Meanwhile, Toby is in the ship’s gym, running in place with a bunch of other workout nuts, shouting “It’s fun to stay at ♫ the Y-M-C-A! ♪” at the top of her lungs. They’re not playing the song on the gym soundsystem or anything and she’s not, it goes without saying, staying at the YMCA. She just likes yelling things.

Mark Trail, 4/11/17

Meanwhile, over in Mark Trail, things are taking a much grittier and more realistic turn than in the high-seas fantasy world of Mary Worth. “It has proven to be a good career for me to provide for my family!” says Mark, unaware that, even as he tussles with this illiterate gunman, back in New York analysts at the private equity firm that recently took over Woods and Wildlife Magazine’s near-bankrupt parent company are going over the books and discovering some truly hair-raising numbers. “So, this guy is on the payroll as a full-time employee with benefits, but he files maybe three, four stories a year? And he’s tied to the company’s skyrocketing insurance premiums? Well, first thing we do is shift him to contractor status. And we won’t need any more of these 12,000-word essays about ferrets or whatever; he’s welcome to send us some clickbait ‘You won’t BELIEVE which National Monuments have the most celebrity nude sunbathers’ slideshows for $250 a pop. OK, with that taken care of, let’s look at our spending on office space — I think there’s a lot of savings we can find there, too.”

Family Circus, 4/11/17

Oh, man, Billy is definitely just one step away from “and why isn’t there a WHITE history month????” right now.

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Crankshaft, 4/9/17

So, today’s Crankshaft only makes sense to people who understand all the weird nooks and crannies of the Funkyverse’s decades-long chrono-disjunctive narrative arcs, and, due to my many sins, I am one of those people, and as a punishment I guess I’m going to explain it to you? See, this takes place a decade in the past compared to Funky Winkerbean, and so Les is still hawking Fallen Star, his book about the murder of John Darling, who was the father of his soon-to-be-in-this-timeframe-dead wife’s biological son’s future wife. He spent years researching this book, which revealed that John Darling was killed by Plantman, as depicted in the final installment of the failed Funkyverse strip John Darling. The book was a financial failure! But Lillian, who has gone to this seminar on how to write a book only to encounter an author so unaccomplished that he held a book signing in the illegal bookstore she runs in her attic, is full of reassuring sentiments. Don’t worry, she says to Les: someday you’ll write something special, once your wife dies of cancer — like, I don’t know, the very book that appears in the first panel??? Anyway, the lesson here is that if you want literary success, you can’t write about just anyone dying, it has to be about someone you really love.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/9/17

Meanwhile, in the Funkypresent, it turns out Les is spending the energy he’s supposed to be channeling into yet another book about Lisa into primate-terminology-banter with his current, alive wife. C’mon, Les, the misery porn’s not going to write itself!

Mary Worth, 4/9/17

You know, the thought of going on a cruise has never really appealed to me, but the first couple panels here show me some of the charm. Who hasn’t wanted to yell at Florida from a safe distance away? “FUCK YOU, FLORIDA,” is what I’d shout. “YOU FUCKIN’ SUCK.”

Meanwhile, Toby is getting awful philosophical in the last panel. It’s true that you never know what tomorrow may bring! Maybe it’ll bring some guy out of his mind on nicotine withdrawal, just stabbing everyone who gets in his way on the no-cigs hell-cruise that destroyed his will to live! Who can say!

Shoe, 4/9/17

It turns out Roz, a major character in the long-running syndicated comic strip Shoe, is bisexual! This is an intriguing revelation, but it’s not an excuse for running a strip without a punchline of any sort?