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Mark Trail, 8/6/19

“Also, what if your gun had one off on purpose? You know, if, while you were pointing your gun at us with your finger on the trigger and threatening to murder us if we didn’t follow your commands, you had deliberately shot us with the gun, like you said you would. That also would’ve been a terrible tragedy! Anyway, I guess we’re all going to walk through the desert together over the next few days and then get into your car, so I want you to reflect on all the ways doing things that would have been beneficial to you would have also been bad for us.”

Family Circus, 8/6/19

I’m not usually one to praise the Family Circus art, but seeing Big Daddy Keane’s whole body spasming in shock and surprise as a bucketful of ice-cold water cascades over his back, his glasses flying off his face, warmed my black, withered heart this morning. I’m a particular fan of PJ’s expression, which basically seems to be saying “Phase one of the experiment has yielded interesting results; let’s move on to phase two, shall we?”

Pluggers, 8/6/19

“Pluggers and their friends are all dying” is a perennial and beloved running gag in this strip, but you have to respect today’s take on it: if a plugger lives long enough, not only will all his friends die, but he’ll get to see all the cultural touchstones that tethered him to a wider society die off as well, only to be replaced by strange and alienating newcomers!

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Pluggers, 7/29/19

What is the facial expression on this plugger supposed to be conveying? Is it a sly smile? Is this plugger thinking about how he “accidentally” left the house without his suspenders today? How his pants might just “accidentally” fall down, and there would be no way for him to stop it? Oops! How embarrassing! How naughty! Everyone will be able to see! It’s not his fault, he just forgot, but I suppose sometimes we need to be punished for our mistakes.

Gil Thorp, 7/29/18

Welp, it looks like Hadley has figured out what she’s doing with her summer, which is idly threatening to personally sue school board members for preventing Tiki Jansen from attending school in a district he doesn’t live in. Hey, you ever hear about poor parents who fudge their address so their kids can go to school in a better, wealthier school district and up getting sent to jail? Really too bad that none of those kids were on a varsity team with a coach who could connect them with a bored, unethical lawyer, huh?

Hi and Lois, 7/29/18

Look, Lois, Hi doesn’t give a shit about his dumb job or his mediocre salary. You know what Hi cares about? Golf. Winning at golf makes him horny as hell, and you’re clearly pretty pleased about the result, so let’s not quibble about the motivations.

Shoe, 7/29/19

Ha ha, it’s funny because Skyler, much like his uncle, is terribly depressed! Also a bird? A bird that, like all modern birds, doesn’t have teeth? And thus would have no use for orthodontia?

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Pluggers, 7/24/19

If I were to make a joke about exurban American old people obsessively watching Matlock, it would be rude, but since Pluggers is a feature by and for exurban American old people, they can say it, and I respect that. Anyway, my guess is that what the dog-man plugger is attempting to convey is less “I use the syndicated rebroadcasts of classic TV shows in the pre-local-news programming block to tell the time, just as my ancestors used the position of the sun and the stars” and more “woman, please hold your tongue and do not interrupt me during my favorite stories, it makes it hard to focus and solve the mystery, we discussed this.”

Mark Trail, 7/24/19

I always knew Mark Trail was in the tank for the Fourth Estate, but who knew that the payoff of this story would be that good local journalism was the real treasure all along — more valuable than gold?

Mary Worth, 7/24/19

Dawn has spent most of this date using factoids from the “Trivia” section of Wikipedia articles she got to from clicking names in the “List of French people” at random as conversational prompts, and somehow it’s still going better than the last one did.