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Mary Worth, 6/5/23

Haha, remember how when Saul Wynter was first introduced to this strip, Toby made a big show of not liking him, and when his original, pre-Greta dog died, Toby reported the news with a certain amount of — well, not glee, exactly, but the vibe was less “this is a true tragedy” than “ha ha, an old man is emotionally in turmoil, can’t wait to relay this little morsel of gossip!” So anyway, that’s why Mary has to emphasize to her that “Look, if you see the dog, do not just say to yourself, ‘Oh, that’s Saul’s dumb little dog,’ and then go on with your day, and when Ian sees that you have a little smile and asks you what you’re thinking about you just say ‘Oh, nothing.’ Please tell me, OK?”

Blondie, 6/5/23

Look, I’m not going to say that I would pay $200 a week for lawn maintenance, but I don’t have a huge suburban lawn and an HOA that would threaten to put a lein on my house if the grass was longer than half an inch like the Bumsteads probably do. I also feel like any time Blondie brings up the question of pricing for the sort of services that upper-middle-class people might avail themselves of, the attitude is usually “Oh, you think your labor has value? You think your riding mower is a capital expense for your business that needs to be recouped, rather than the fun toy that I would treat it as if I owned it? Well an exaggerated version of you is about to be cut down to size in a nationally syndicated newspaper comic strip that I inherited, buddy!”

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Family Circus, 6/2/23

Nextdoor, the social network that’s like Facebook except instead of people who you actually like or at least know it’s full of people who happen to live near you, isn’t exactly a hotbed of positivity, but last summer, a nice lady posted a comment along the lines of “I’ve really been noticing the new trend of shorter shorts on men, and I just want to tell the gentlemen in the neighborhood who are partaking: I see you and I appreciate you.” I had just gone in for some shorter new J. Crew stretch chinos myself, and I have to wonder: was she talking about me? I guess I’ll never know, but I’d like think so. But none of us hipsters could hold a candle to Billy’s coach here, who quite clearly was drawn in another decade altogether. What do you think the original caption to this one was? I’m thinking “Can we delay the start of the game, Coach? My dad has to smoke an entire pack of cigarettes and also doesn’t want to hang out with me.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/2/23

Look, non-union Jughead equivalent: I’m not going to say I’m happy that Funky Winkerbean was finally put out to pasture, but I am frankly glad to no longer be thinking about convoluted comic strip timelines, so you can just keep your theories to yourself, buddy.

Marvin, 6/2/23

Wow, grandpa looks smug as hell! Not sure if that means that he is on the History Channel or he isn’t, but either way it’s an unpleasant vibe.

Mary Worth, 6/2/23

Damn you, Lyle Lovett! You’d better not eat that dog!

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Family Circus, 5/28/23

The Good Place was a great philosophical afterlife sitcom, and in its later seasons you learn that the titular Good Place (its cosmology’s equivalent of heaven) hasn’t had any new arrivals in centuries, because an increasingly complex and intertwined society has made it impossible for a living person to make any choice that doesn’t directly or indirectly cause harm to someone else. Today’s Family Circus, however, posits the flipside of this scenario: due to an overall lowering of human misery (in the long view violence worldwide really is probably lower now than any other time in history) plus a radical increase in population, heaven is simply being overwhelmed by a number of souls that its infrastructure simply isn’t equipped to handle, leaving the virtuous dead to sit packed together on clouds with little to do to occupy the rest of eternity, like inmates in an open-air prison camp. It’s not surprising that these spirits need to occasionally sneak back to the plane of the living to experience just enough sensory input to keep them from going mad!

Mary Worth, 5/28/23

Excuse me, Mary Worth, I thought it should’ve been obvious that when I called for a preemptive bans on “dogs in peril” plots, I meant not just that Eve’s dog should get a clean bill of health from the vet, but also that Greta should not be dognapped by a traveling dognapper who drives around in a muddy van with tricked out rims. Sorry, I guess I’ll try to be more specific next time, but until then let’s work on getting Greta liberated post-haste, OK?

Pluggers, 5/28/23

A plugger loves his wife … but he also loves the beast within her.