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Mary Worth, 7/4/23

Greetings, fellow Americans! Hopefully you are spending today watching fireworks and patriotically contemplating’s our nation’s successful defeat of the accursed British in our War of Independence, like Mary is in today’s strip. But sadly, many comics characters are not — a group that apparently includes all of Mary’s friends, since she’s just sitting on this hillside by self. Sure, Old Man Wynter and his posse are probably making sure Greta’s trauma (oh, they found Greta by the way, she managed to get the cage open herself and escape) isn’t compounded by the fireworks noises, but what about Ian and Toby? Dr. Jeff? Wilbur? Do they have something better to do than bask in the majesty of American greatness? Apparently so, and as we’ll see in the following strips, they are not alone.

Blondie, 7/4/23

Remember back in May when Dagwood wanted everyone to know that nobody could best him when it came to respecting the troops, but it turned out it was just a ruse to prevent his nap from being interrupted? Well, now he can’t even be bothered to use patriotism as a pretext.

Beetle Bailey, 7/4/23

Honestly, though, who could blame him when the troops themselves don’t seem to care about America’s birthday? Today’s Beetle Bailey includes the most half-assed wedged-in patriotic message since the infamous Luann 9/11 anniversary strip. I guess we can’t expect these soldiers to put energy into frivolous partying, even the most patriotic kind, when there’s important military preparedness work to be done. I hear the People’s Liberation Army’s lawns are immaculate.

Family Circus, 7/4/23

Jeffy’s OK with fireworks, but doesn’t want to share space with others enjoying them in ways he doesn’t approve of. He loves America but is annoyed by his fellow Americans and that’s no kind of patriotism at all!

The Lockhorns, 7/4/23

Leroy is using the 4th as yet another opportunity to be unpleasantly horny, and honestly? I’ll allow it.

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The Lockhorns, 7/1/23

Ahh, another entry in the “Lockhorns are millennials” files: Yes, Leroy got up to 301 at UCB, yes he absolutely was that guy who derailed every scene to focus on his extremely unfunny obsessions, yes, he always tried to push things towards scenarios that would allow him to feel up his female classmates, and yes everyone he took the class with set up a new group chat without him as soon as the class ended. He preemptively told Loretta “not to bother” coming to the class show at the end of the session because “most people don’t have guests” — he told himself it was because maybe something might happen with one of the girls in the class at the afterparty, but in fact he knew that if Loretta had seen him alive and vulnerable on stage, she would have delivered one of the most savage putdowns she’d ever mustered on the ride home.

Mary Worth, 7/1/23

Ha ha, what if it were a pizza, though. It would be pretty funny if there were just a big pizza lying on the ground and Max ran up and started snarfing up all that cheese and getting tomato sauce all over his snout. Turns out Max doesn’t give a shit about Greta! It was about the pizza all along!

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Hi and Lois, 6/28/23

The word “organ” in English originally referred to the musical instrument, and the process by which its sense drifted so that it came to also mean a body part used for a certain function, while the adjective “organic” now primarily means “free from pesticides and fertilizers” is complex and, like most etymological changes, arbitrary. (A parallel process in French produced biologique as the analogue to “organic” in English, which always tickles me.) But, look, here’s the thing: babies, though you might be tempted to think of them as people with fully formed minds but very little information about the world, which leads them to try to reason everything out from first principles, are not in fact like that at all, especially when it comes to language acquisition. They just learn words they hear people say and figure out their meaning from context, so they’re going to be able to tell what “organic” means independent of what “organs” are and might not make the connection for years! Also, how much are Hi and Lois talking about organs in front of their baby? Seems suspect. Let’s put a pin in that for later.

Mary Worth, 6/28/23

Obviously if one of my beloved pets had vanished and I had been primed by sensationalistic local news coverage to believe that they had been kidnapped, I would be distraught. But I feel like I have enough distance from the situation here to point out that (a) Greta’s disappearance was, like several days ago and (b) even if Max could track Greta’s scent, he definitely couldn’t track the scent of the van that Saul thinks took Greta away. What I’m trying to say is that it actually does not matter how fast Saul hustles on this mission, so he shouldn’t endanger his health just so he feels like he’s putting in his “best effort”.

Beetle Bailey, 6/28/23

OK, I retract my statement from Monday, Sarge/Beetle secret romance content is fully back and it’s better than ever