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Between Friends, 12/21/22

So Monday and Tuesday’s Between Friends were about one of the families in the Between Friends gang watching the Twilight saga, which, for those young people who aren’t aware, was a popular series of films about sexy teen vampires and werewolves that came out in the late ’00s and early ’10s, primarily remembered now for delivering so much cash to its stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison that they can now afford to spend time doing weirdo art-house films directed by David Cronenberg and various French people. Monday featured the mother and daughter of the [note to self: look up the names of these people, or maybe don’t if you’re too busy or it seems hard] family lusting after Pattison, and Tuesday was about the father getting excited that he recognized Pattison from the new Batman movie, but now it’s day three and we’ve got to reckon with the question of why on earth a syndicated comic strip would spend time making Twilight jokes in the Year of our Lord 2022. Turns out that it’s because some of us were too busy raising a family ten years ago to get horned up over teen vampires acting out some really regressive sexual and gender roles, OK? Thank god for streaming services that allow us to catch up now! Ultimately the upshot of all this is that it got me to look up where you can stream the Twilight movies, and it turns out the only place is on something called “Fubo,” so if Fubo paid for this subtle sponcon in Between Friends, then congrats, I guess, it worked.

Gil Thorp, 12/21/22

Oh, whoops, it looks like Gil lost the big game to his arch-rival and … wait, we have a last minute-reversal of that call, it looks like Gil is the real winner because he coaches for the love of the game and competition, not because he’s obsessed with winning. Who could have seen this one coming, Gil triumphing over all by being the bigger man, and I mean that quite literally, as panel one makes very clear. “Is someone talking?” Gil asks in panel three, as he gazes over Coach Martinez’s head. “I think I hear something, but I don’t see anyone.”

Curtis, 12/21/22

Hmm, Greg is a stickler for rules and a civil servant to boot, so I’m kind of surprised he isn’t aware that mail carriers aren’t supposed to accept cash tips. Maybe he’s never looked into the regs because, as a DMV employee, this hasn’t really ever come up for him personally.

Family Circus, 12/21/22

Look, I don’t want to say that the Family Circus is just a bunch of clip art mashed over decades-old panels, but … what is going on with this closet door. Why does it look like this? Did the Keane Kompound get featured on some second-tier HGTV show that just shiplapped everything?

Mary Worth, 12/21/22

We’ve all wondered why Wilbur hasn’t yet been formally ostracized by the Charterstone condo board and forcibly exiled to the Outer Wastes. Well, it looks like Mary has learned from Dawn how useful he is as a foil and is now using him to really cut down on the work that goes into her meddling. Instead of needing to come up with bespoke advice for everyone’s specific problems, she can just ask everyone WWWD: What Wouldn’t Wilbur Do?

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/19/22

We’ve all wondered about the circumstances of the elaborate gift-giving sequence in “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” and especially about its emphasis on birds. Well, what if the gift giver actually stole those birds, for his hungry true love to eat? Really makes you think, doesn’t it?

Dennis the Menace, 12/19/22

I can’t decide which kind “Italian accent” is funnier here: “Eyyyy, I got my eyes on you, kid, so don’t screw up, capisce? Badda boom badda bing” or “MAMA MIA! THE IMMIGRANTS, WE-A TAKING YOUR MALL SANTA JOBS!”

Mary Worth, 12/19/22

Sorry, I know the bolding in Mary’s word balloon is supposed make her sound surprised, but look at her face. She is absolutely saying “Wow, what are the odds of that” in a complete monotone. Sorry, Iris, did you hear that Wilbur fell off a boat and survived but let everyone think he was dead for a week because he loves drama? Your “boo hoo, I’m just as beautiful as my rich hunky himbo fiance’s beautiful baby sitter” story is not cutting it. You have to up your damn game!

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Curtis, 12/13/22

Part of the whole comedic engine that makes Curtis work is that Greg Wilkins is kind of a square. Still, I hadn’t guessed just how much he eschewed the modern world’s loose morals — and how much he secretly yearned to emulate them — until today. “Dare I?” he thinks. “Dare I take off not just my shoes, but my socks — and not in the shower or under the covers at night, but in out in the open in the living room, where anyone who lives here can see my bare feet? I mean, why not? If I have to look at naked toes every day thanks to the out-of-control liberal media, plus all those foot fetish websites I keep accidentally ending up on when I do innocent Google searches like ‘is it legal to go barefoot’ and ‘punishment for barefoot in public’ and ‘big toed nymphos can’t stop foot-fucking,’ then who am I to cling to the old ways?”

Hi and Lois, 12/13/22

As you should know by now, my favorite kind of Hi and Lois strip is the kind where we see just how dark the Thurstons’ lives are, and today’s really pays off in that department, with Thirsty sitting in his patched chair in front of his computer where he’s watching the game on some janky illegal stream from Slovenia that’s downloading malware right now, maybe because he failed to pay his cable bill, maybe because he’s in a fight with Irma and they’ve divided the house in half with masking tape, I Love Lucy-style, and she’s claimed the living room. Either way, I assume that “My football team is having a losing season” is code for “I’ve lost a ton of money betting on the NFL this year,” and his depressed slouch tells me he was in for a lot on Portugal over Morocco too.

Mary Worth, 12/13/22

I know we’ve all been trying to figure out what exactly Zak’s deal is over the course of this storyline, but I really do think we need to apply Occam’s Razor and accept the simplest answer, which is that Zak is just kind of dumb.