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Beetle Bailey, 7/24/14

Soldiers are entitled to “… confidential, non-medical problem-solving counseling … provided by licensed, certified counselors on demand. Up to twelve (12) counseling sessions may be provided for each issue, at no cost to the Soldier or Family member.”

I suppose Dr. Bonkus can bill Amos and Martha Halftrack because they’ve needed hundreds of hours of counseling to fan this spark of romance from the ashes of their loveless union? Or maybe Bonkus bills them off-books for the use of his office because this is the only place they can get it on?

Alternatively: old-people sex, ew.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/24/14

After months of searching, Holly has at last located Starbuck Jones #115. The find was faked, of course – Comic John bought the comic in San Diego and had his pal plant it where Holly would find it, just as people have patronized and condescended to her at every step of her little odyssey.

No matter, though — Holly has found a way to bond with her son Cory by completing his collection while he serves in Afghanistan, drawing his cherished project to a close.

And this being Funky Winkerbean, somewhere in the hills of the Panjiwayi District, a sniper adjusts his windage. Somebody is going to get an authentic experience out of all this.

Pluggers, 7/24/14

In fairness, though, that’s when the washer starts.

Luann, 7/24/14

In its 30th year, Luann has finally taken the plunge and graduated its cast from high school. Insufferable do-gooder Delta is off to Howard University; second-string ethnic paragon Rosa Aragones spurned Yale for a job mucking out bedpans at her uncle’s clinic in “Peru” with dweeb Gunther in tow; and Bernice, Tiffany, and Quill will attend local “Moony Uni.” So, now, too will Luann herself, on the basis of a previously unseen gift for spatial reasoning, which fortunately requires no knowledge or effort to apply.

Our Moral: don’t waste your time learning and doing stuff — just wait for somebody to reward you for qualities you already possess. Our Motto: Inertia!

9 Chickweed Lane, 7/24/14

What, no chance for a Quigley here?

— Uncle Lumpy

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Momma, 7/10/14

For a brief and horrifying moment I was pretty convinced that Momma had descended into full-on nightmare, with its elderly characters’ organs liquifying, leaving them nothing more than wrinkled skin-bags waddling around full of audibly sloshing viscera-slurry. But now I think that maybe this is a pants-wetting joke? Old people have problems with incontinence? Ha … ha? Never have I grasped onto the possibility of an incontinence joke with such desperation.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/10/14

Generic Customer Guy is right to look so dubious about Herb’s dad’s advice. “So … you want me to relentlessly pursue a woman who made her romantic disinterest in me clear not once but twice? Sure, that can only end well for everybody.”

Pluggers, 7/10/14

Sure, most people tune into Pluggers for the lower-middle class exurban cultural resentment, but I think they’re going to like the new creative direction, where it’s just streams of absurdist nonsense, just fine!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/7/14

The arrival of Loweezy and li’l Bizzy Buzz Buzz at Snuffy’s Den of Bachelor Squalor is such a proudly announced non-sequitur that I immediately assumed Bizzy Buzz Buzz is a beloved recurring character in Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, if by “recurring” you mean “hasn’t appeared once in the 10 years I’ve been reading this strip but they’ve been publishing the damn thing since 1919, so who knows.” Some cursory Googling (ha) didn’t bring up any evidence of this, though it did reveal that Bizzy Buzz Buzz was some kind of motorized pen that looked like a bird that was a popular toy in the ’60s and ’70s. By the way, if you’re looking for some super-depressing anecdotes, you could do worse than looking at classic toy discussion forums, apparently:

Funky Winkerbean, 7/7/14

Funky Winkerbean is sadly cutting away from Les’s artistic despair to focus on its suuuuper boring comics collecting plot, but I do like the fact that Holly is giving a shout-out to Crankshaft in the final panel here. “Hey, remember that monstrous old hatebag who used to drive the bus, who made all the stupid puns? Whatever happened to him?” (Spoiler: he’s a vegetative husk in a nursing home, dying unloved and alone).

Judge Parker, 7/7/14

This is all the same stuff from yesterday, which I’m glad about because yesterday I forgot to make a joke about the fact that Neddy is wearing a sleeveless t-shirt that just says “FRANCE” across the front. Do you think she got it in France? Do you think the French make them specifically to sell to Americans, and then laugh and laugh whenever anyone buys one?

Pluggers, 7/7/14

Not sure how many of you have ever clicked on the “MORE” link next to the archive drop-downs at the top of the site. It takes you to the advanced archives page, where you can search the site for posts with specific comics, on specific dates, and with specific keywords. It’s a nice system, built by my fantastic web developer Adam Norwood, and you should use it to your heart’s content, but really I had it set up for my own use. Sometimes I get a little nagging feeling in the back of my mind to the effect of “did I do this joke before?” and the answer is just a search away:

Anyway, feel free to enjoy the joke I wrote on this subject in October of 2012!