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Dick Tracy, 7/4/12

Oh, what’s that, Communist? You’re just a little too busy on this July 4th Freedom America day to admire the US flag? Dick Tracy would like to have some words with you. He’s in the middle of a bloody shootout with Mr. Crime’s gang, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have time to find an enormous American flag and salute it! Those explosions behind him aren’t fireworks; they’re actual gunfire. Dick Tracy won’t let mortal danger get in the way of his patriotism!

Funky Winkerbean, 7/4/12

How great is America? So great that everyone, even non-human primates, are trying to gain entry by any means necessary.

Luann, 7/4/12

Not that we should just open the floodgates to baboons, or, worse, Australians. Luann and Quill finally advanced from endless flirting to light making out, and within minutes, the U.S. government moved to deport his entirely family, making sure that he keeps his filthy foreign paws off of virtuous American girls.

Mary Worth, 7/4/12

Meanwhile, Wilbur has only been out of America’s nourishing atmosphere for a few days, and already he’s degenerating into a sadistic monster. “Imagine the history of this place! Gladiators stood here thousands of years ago, savagely murdering one another, or attacking innocent victims persecuted for their political or religious beliefs, or being torn to pieces by wild beasts … all for my amusement! I can almost smell the blood!”

Hi and Lois, 7/4/12

Back home, the Flagstons clearly believe that America’s independence is best celebrated as far from their fellow Americans as possible.

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Apartment 3-G, 7/3/12

“Should I use the ritual obsidian dagger I was saving to finally kill Margo with to cut the still-living child from Nina’s womb? I’m not sure if using it to shed blood in order to save a life will sap of it the dark power it needs for its intended purpose — or will only make it stronger. Damn it, I need to find a necromancer to consult, stat!”

Mary Worth, 7/3/12

“I mean, in America we never snort wasabi paste out of a coke spoon, right? Try to expand your horizons here!”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/1/12

Here is a True Story from Josh’s Real Life Events: Many years ago, when I in the midst of my failed attempt to acquire a PhD in ancient history, I discovered that getting a humanities grad degree doesn’t pay particularly well, so I used to do office temp work between semesters. So in this one temp gig, I was doing doing filing at a professional association for optometrists with a guy who was getting an MFA in poetry (AND THAT SENTENCE IS A SELF-CONTAINED CAUTIONARY TALE FOR ANYONE THINKING ABOUT GRAD SCHOOL, BY THE WAY). As people do when bored with mindless work, we started shooting the pop-culture breeze, and somehow it came up that I had alway found it amusing that Steve Miller appeared, based on the evidence of the lyrics in his smash hit song “Take The Money And Run,” to believe that “Texas,” “taxes,” “facts is,” and “justice” all rhymed with one another. And the poet-temp, whether to pull my leg or be contrary or because of genuine poetic conviction, made the case that there is a such thing as a “soft rhyme,” which has a long and honorable history in poetry, and thus Miller’s rhyme scheme was perfectly acceptable in that context.

I was already planning on bringing this anecdote up as a lens through which to discuss Mary Beth’s rhyming of “holler,” “dollar,” and “feller.” In my own speech, the first two rhyme with each other but neither with the third, and I wondered if this were an example of soft rhyme or if we were getting a glimpse of the phonology of Hootin’ Holler’s unique, isolated dialect. But then I took one last look at the throwaway panels and finally noticed that Mary Beth begins the strip by reading Emily Dickinson — the very poet my co-temp used as an example of someone who employed soft rhymes frequently. Thus I’m assuming that our young poetess, while still clinging to traditional structural forms like the limerick, is beginning to explore more advanced techniques. This is, in other words, the most cultured Barney Google and Snuffy Smith ever written, not that there’s really much competition for that title.

Blondie, 7/1/12

Speaking of academia, if you’re writing a thesis about the connection between masculinity and earning power in pop-cultural depictions of contemporary society, you could find worse examples than the next-to-last panel here, in which Dagwood, finally realizing that he’s been duped again, crouches a bit and gently protects his crotch with his briefcase.

Mary Worth, 7/1/12

I was going to write the long riff about how Mary’s response is just as vague and bloviating and self-important as the letter that prompted it, but then I got to the final panel, where we learn that Dawn can’t go anywhere without being reminded of her ex-boyfriend’s cock, and literally all other thoughts were sandblasted out of my mind.