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Family Circus, 2/25/22

I was going to do a joke about Dolly undermining her parents’ Flat Earth beliefs in front of PJ, but then I got a look at the utter, inky blackness outside the window. She definitely lives in some nightmare-dimension where the Sun has vanished, possibly forever, leaving the Keane Kompound as the last speck of light in a vanishing universe. Dolly’s little lie to PJ now seems like a final act of kindness before they too are snuffed out forever.

Pluggers, 2/25/22

Pluggers may not have insurance and may not be able to afford any actual medication to put in their medicine cabinet, but they still have a “health care plan”: to die with dignity by drinking a bunch of hotel shampoo after they diagnose themselves with a terminal disease from information they found on WebMD.

Mary Worth, 2/25/22

I’m not sure “uncanny” is a compliment in this context? Like, yes, Toby has probably figured out what’s going on here and does want to get laid, but she had to bite her tongue to keep herself from following it with “valley.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/25/22

You hear that, Rex and “Kyle”? This criminal absolutely doesn’t give a shit about you! You’re lucky your daughter/coauthor’s cute!

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Mary Worth, 2/18/22

Look, I’m not going trying to draw any particular conclusions here, but it is really true that a surprising number of Mary Worth plots involve romances with eyebrow-raising age gaps! You know, Zak-Iris, Dawn-Harlan, Dawn-Dr. Drew, Ian-Toby … and now Toby-Cal? Toby has been whining about her birthday all week, but maybe she’s finally hit that magical age when she can stop being inappropriately young for her sexual partners, like Dawn, and instead can start finding sexual partners who are inappropriately young for her, like Iris. The c-i-i-r-r-cle of life!

Pluggers, 2/18/22

Wait. What. What? You’re telling me there are European pluggers? No. Absolutely not. Actually, hold up, that’s not a very Italian looking name, which leads me to believe that this is an American living in Rome. The only thing less plugger than a European is an American expat in Europe. I demand that this panel be stricken down by the plugger court of arbitration (which consists of three manimals lingering over all-you-can drink coffee at a diner somewhere, to the annoyance of the wait staff).

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Dennis the Menace, 2/12/22

This is in reality an extremely egregious example of working backwards from a punchline to a joke, without putting much effort in trying to figure out how to make the backstory work logically, but damn it, now I’m trying to figure out the backstory behind a guy receiving an epiphany from the Lord above at a church and then switching to another church. I’m imagining the heavens opening and a divine voice informing Mr. Wilson that his current denomination, the General Six-Principle Baptists, were heretics, as were the General Association of Baptists, the General Association of General Baptists, and the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, and only the General Conference of the Evangelical Baptist Church carried the true faith.

Mark Trail, 2/12/22

You know, I remember a time when Rusty would be over the moon just to be allowed to go on a trip with Mark and Cherry, and would certainly not plan on killing a cryptid for social media fame without their permission. I guess it’s true that the only way to raise a respectful ward son is to keep him in a “Rusty coop” out back 350 days a year. Parents these days are going soft, and it’s the source of nothing but trouble!

Pluggers, 2/12/22

I think a lot about a story a friend once told me about a Bay Area Vietnamese restaurant that was famous for serving fake but very convincing meat in its dishes. Once my friend was eating there and a guy came in and started berating the owner, who always was out and about serving as host, about how even though they weren’t serving meat they were still promoting meat culture, which is a culture of death. The owner listened to his whole diatribe stone-faced and finally just replied, “Look, we’re Buddhists, we like pork but we can’t eat it.” Anyway, after seeing this panel, I’m going to spend my weekend working on “horseshoe theory, but for pluggers.”

Dick Tracy, 2/12/22

This doesn’t actually have anything to do with the Moran case directly; Dick just knows that the best way to loosen up and get his head “into the zone” as we go into the weekend is to hunt a PR guy for sport.