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Mary Worth, 8/8/17

Shoutout to Mary Worth for starting a storyline where I honestly have no idea where they’re going with it! Like, are we supposed to see poor klutzy Jared, who can’t even manage to properly match his scrubs, as a more decent and down-to-earth romantic partner than moody, handsome Dr. Ned? Or is a humiliated Jared going to go home and leave a 3,000-word screed on the r/incel subreddit about how he’s been thwarted by chads for the last time, then head into the hospital to kill everybody there? (If none of the words in that last sentence made any sense to you, check out this glossary, which I’m sorry for introducing you to.)

Hi and Lois, 8/8/17

I’m on the record as embracing Hi and Lois’s Thirsty’s return to form as an unpleasant drunk, and I’m eager to see just how far down that path the strip is willing to go! “My life’s already a mess!” a disheveled Thirsty, his nose already glowing with booze at 5:30 pm, bellows to his only friend as he spends his entire paycheck on scratch-offs.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/8/17

We already have one elderly refugee here on the Island Of Misfit Ancillary Starbuck Jones Creative Toilers, and its Cliff Anger, whose career ended when as an idealistic young lefty he didn’t pivot quickly enough to follow America’s changing attitudes towards the USSR after World War II. Phil Holt, though? He’s not Phil Holt of Batom Comics anymore, and if you look into his eyes in the final panel, you know that the reason is definitely murder.

Pluggers, 8/8/17

Wait, do pluggers think that you have to live in a different city and not interact with someone in person to be a friend? Is that what people are telling them? That’s unbelievably sad.

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Mark Trail, 7/28/17

So it turns out those weird-haired paper pushers back at the Rapid City office aren’t weilling to go out into the field and get their hands dirty in the hunt for the Bank Robber Band One Of Whom Is A Lady. Nope, that job has fallen to … badass local sheriff Don Stober! Don’s going to brave rain and tornadoes to find out that Mark has already punched out all the bad buys, probably. Anyway, let’s all admire his mustache and elegantly tapered sideburns, which are cut short enough that no inclement weather can muss them.

Pluggers, 7/28/17

I’ve long tried to explain that being a plugger is actually a complex identity formed by a series of interrelated cultural, class, and political markers, and isn’t just a synonym for being old. However, today’s panel seems to fatally undermine my argument! Actually, the caption implies that being a plugger means not just being old, but being capable of remembering not being old and comparing it your current state of oldness, which frankly is a lot more capacity for self-reflection and abstract thought than I’ve ever credited to pluggers.

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Mark Trail, 7/10/17

Ahhhh, finally we get the payoff to this long story of the Great Water-World Disaster, a delightful panel depicting our wayward walrus giving birth in the shattered, water-logged shell of a formerly high-prestige sport utility vehicle. Given Mark’s previous downplaying of the disastrous nature of this episode, you’d think that he’d be a lot cheerier about helping this majestic sea-beast in its time of need; but instead, he and Johnny are watching the birth process with expressions of open horror. One suspects that this is the first time they’ve become truly acquainted with the procedure through which baby walruses are born, and are beginning to connect the dots to the human children they occasionally encounter as well.

Lesley, meanwhile, has purported throughout her retelling of this anecdote to be in a high dudgeon, but her expression and body language in today’s strip resemble nothing so much as Bernini’s frankly erotic depiction of Saint Teresa in ecstacy, so maybe we need to re-evaluate everything we thought we know about her attitude towards Mark and her obviously complex inner life.

Pluggers, 7/10/17

Pluggers may leave a trail of pollution wherever they go, but by God they aren’t going to SHARE THEIR CAR with SOMEBODY ELSE like BIG GOVERNMENT WANTS THEM TO like some kind of COMMUNIST