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Mary Worth, 4/5/23

Ah ha, we’ve finally arrived at the big dramatic twist in this storyline: Estelle has to convince Dr. Ed to go to therapy! I look forward to the next several weeks in which she gently overcomes his emotional reserves and lets him know that admitting he needs help isn’t a sign of weakn–oh, wait, what’s that? He said he’d be into it literally the first time she mentioned it? Ah. Well. I guess I look forward to the next several weeks in which he tries to figure out if Estelle’s therapist takes his insurance.

Family Circus, 4/5/23

Look, Dolly, I get that your whole job is saying the darnedest things, and there are only so many darnedest things available to say in the relatively limited space of a Family Circus caption, but I feel it’s very important that you not imply some kind of appliance vore fetish scenario here, because this panel will get posted in some web forums that none of us will be comfortable with.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/5/23

I think there’s something of a divide between people who say “fucking” to mean any kind of sex stuff generally, and people who say it to mean specifically p-in-v or -a intercourse. We know Eddie’s had a longtime romantic relationship with a mermaid, and today I guess we’re learning that this relationship’s sexual component has fallen into definition one but not definition two above — at least so far. I mean, that’s what this strip’s about, right? The prospect of penetrative sex with a mermaid? It’s not a strip with another joke that also slyly makes reference to “how exactly would it work for a guy to stick his dick in a mermaid?” Like that’s pretty explicitly what this one’s about?

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Dustin, 4/1/23

Today’s Dustin is based on one of my least favorite (which is really saying something) running strip premises, which is that the supposedly young characters attempt to meet other young people for romantic reasons at fern bars where the guys all drink pint glasses of beer and the gals all drink wine, rather than by staring blankly at their phones and putting forth the minimum physical effort necessary to swipe in one direction or another for hours on end. But if we’re accepting this make-belive fantasy world, I approve of today’s strip, in which one of the aforementioned wine-drinking ladies decides that she’s going to make a move on the gents! You go, girl! I guess Dustin’s friend Fitch, whose whole characterization in the strip thus far has been “is stupid,” can now additionally be characterized as “is supposed to be reasonably attractive in-universe.” Obviously she leaves immediately once she get’s a whiff of their terrible personalities.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/1/23

Hootin’ Holler has long been completely isolated from mainstream civilization save for the occasional faint radio broadcast, so taking care to tend to the calendar and its associated set of holy days is a quite important task! Sadly, it’s yet another one that apparently only the women of this community are capable of performing.

Gil Thorp, 4/1/23

Oh, hey, I don’t think I mentioned this, but the Mudlarks have a disturbingly lifelike peacock mascot now, which I believe is a reference to a 2013 storyline where one of the kids thought a peacock he saw was a reincarnation of his dead brother that granted the team good luck, but it just ended up being a peacock that belonged to some guy. This honestly is fine, given that the bird sometimes called a mudlark is usually called a “magpie-lark” and is kind of boring-looking, and I guess we’re all too “PC” now to have a disgusting Victorian urchins looking for scraps of metal on the banks of the Thames to resell as a team mascot.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/1/23

“Sugar on a spoon?” Is this a song about heroin? Is Prof. Augustus Mirakle his dealer? Maybe the tales of Mud Mountain’s digestive distress aren’t finished yet.

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Hi and Lois, 3/30/23

“Oh, are you giddy with anticipation over a fresh new year, full of infinite possibilities? Well, have you considered that, since those possibilities are truly infinite, some of them … are bad, actually? That you could experience lows almost as intense as the highs you’re experiencing now, and indeed have, just as recently as last year? Just a thought to leave you with, I’m going to go ruin somebody’s else’s week now. Maybe I’ll tell Trixie that the sun is millions of miles away and doesn’t think about her at all!”

Mary Worth, 3/30/23

I was about to yell “STOP TALKING ABOUT EUTHANIZING PETS ON DATES, ED” at our poor burned out doctor, but you know what? The last date these two had, he couldn’t shut up about euthanizing pets, and then he tried to blow her off and she basically begged him for another one, so I guess he knows what he’s doing.

The Lockhorns, 3/30/23

Holy crap — Leroy whined about the ability of his cell phone to accommodate the fact that he uses it constantly and someone (presumably a Baby Boomer) tried to burn him by handing him an old landline phone? Folks … you’d better believe that the Lockhorns are Millennials.