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Mary Worth, 10/12/15

Maybe I was a little too hasty in writing off the end of this storyline as a fizzle yesterday. After all, they couldn’t really be setting up the whole rest of the week as some glurgy sentimental reunion of the star-crossed Camerons, could they? I mean, yes, they could, they totally could, but I’m going to chose to read heavily into the surprised angle and hope against hope that this surprise is going to be less than pleasant! Will Ian come stumbling home with his new girlfriend? With his new boyfriend, Hilton Berkes, with Ian’s crush being painfully obvious in retrospect? Will Ian just be so startled by Toby’s presence that he’ll suffer a fatal heart attack, leaving Toby wailing and bereft? Or maybe just a minor cardiac event that will be embarrassing for everyone concerned? Can’t wait!

Dick Tracy, 10/12/15

The fact that Dick Tracy’s Neo-Chicago is apparently in the grip of a multi-week crime wave ought to be proof to anyone that brutal, civil-liberties-violating law enforcement doesn’t actually improve public safety.

Shoe, 10/12/15

Let’s ignore, for the moment, the fact that this joke implies that Mort charges admission to funerals, an innovative but to my knowledge unheard of mortuary business model, and instead focus on the important thing, which is that all of Biz’s friends are dying.

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Mary Worth, 10/11/15

I stand by my earlier claims that this Toby-and-Ian-spat storyline was for a while a beautiful thing to behold, but it appears to be about to fizzle out in an even more disappointing fashion than most Mary Worths. Barring some surprise last-minute twist, like Toby trudging across the hall to find Ian embracing one of his undergraduate students and whining that they were “on a break,” it looks like Toby has used her time alone to decide that her relationship with Ian is great, even though they sometimes yell at or belittle each other. Today’s Sunday strip can’t even be bothered to barf up some poorly-sourced quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay or Douglas MacArthur for the first panel, and who can blame it?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/11/15

Look at how happy old Charlie is! That’s because he’s been summoned out of the narrative ether for one purpose and one purpose only: to sell his fishing cabin to the Morgans for a ridiculously low price. He grins ever wider as he offers his cabin for sale ever more cheaply, reveling that in this moment, he exists, has flesh and blood, breathes air, smells flowers, lives. As soon as the transaction is concluded, he’ll dissolve again to nothingness, just another tenuous shade in the outer darkness. But right now, let’s let him enjoy himself.

Marvin, 10/11/15

Remember how in the first few seasons of the Wire the drug-dealing Barksdale Organization is set up as the primary antagonists, but eventually we get to know and even sympathize with them as characters, and so towards the end of the show’s run they’re displaced by Marlo Stanfield and his crew, who are colder, less sympathetic, more implacable and violent? In unrelated news, here’s a cartoon in which a baby enumerates his urination and defecation sessions with such glee that he disgusts even Marvin.

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Gil Thorp, 9/29/15

You guys can’t imagine how relieved I was to see this scene of cultish flame-worship in today Gil Thorp. There’s only two days left in the month, and I was worried we were about to go into October without seeing the annual Milford bonfire, that extremely unsafe ritual where the town’s children risk horrible burns in the hope of achieving fleeting football glory. After years basking in the sacred fires, years of speeches and devil horns and clenched fists and threats of violence and pleas for health and initiating foreigners in the brotherhood of burning and flinging innocent women into the air and wild-eyed, hours-long harangues, the Mudlarks finally won their championship last year. That’s why it’s extra important to engage in proper cultic behavior this year, to make sure that good fortune is repeated. The scapegoat has already been selected if the spell fails! Meanwhile, Holly Dobbs’s reality crew is capturing all this on tape, which means that Child Protective Services and/or Homeland Security is going to be investigating this whole scene in short order.

Spider-Man, 9/29/15

I can’t really blame this guy for basking in his moment of press attention. After all, usually the only time anyone wants to interview a cruise ship officer for a publication other than Cruise Industry News Quarterly Magazine (or its arch-rival, World Cruise Industry Review) is when they accidentally steer their ship into a rock or when the toilets all stop working and you’re still three days away from Curaçao. I’m a little more concerned that all the world’s leaders have decided to let Captain Epaulets take the PR lead on the issue of an undersea kingdom denying humanity use of the oceans. “Yep, our ability to transport goods from manufacturing centers to high-income nations — completely shut down!” says the grinning man who’s mainly happy that for once the chyron under his face doesn’t say ‘POOP CRUISE’ CAPTAIN: WE USED BUCKETS. “The supply chains on which modern society depends are already collapsing!”

Mary Worth, 9/29/15

“Toby, I’m going to Jeff’s place for a few hours! If you want to invite Ian over … and talk to him on neutral ground … remember that nobody else knows you’re staying here and that these black walls hide blood splatter well.”

Momma, 9/29/15

Here’s today’s Momma! It’s about her walking by a funeral parlor and reflecting that it’s definitely time for her to die.