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Mary Worth, 3/4/24

Oh, so, uh, it seems like the Keith-Kitty-Sonia family fraud reunion plot has … ended? With Keith’s tiny mind unburdened by his terrible deception? No opportunity for follow-up, though, because it’s time for Mary and Jeff’s one-a-quarter date! Yes, nothing will get Mary’s mind off the Crazy World that she learns about entirely through The News better than a desultory sexual encounter on a reasonably successful doctor’s boat.

Pluggers, 3/4/24

Shoutout to Pluggers, whose whole vibe over the decades has carefully created the strategic ambiguity that leaves me, a liberal big-city elitist, unsure whether today’s panel is about some “Hints from Heloise” type technique for keeping your shirts fresh/unwrinkled before a big event, or if it’s just a “Ha ha, pluggers are old and increasingly plagued by dementia” joke.

The Phantom, 3/4/24

The thing about the Phantom is that he’s a tough, gun-toting, fists-flying superhero vigilante but also the product of a 21-generation long eugenics program, and I feel like being raised to know this is true about yourself must have some pretty weird effects on your psyche. Like, check out how aroused Kit Jr. looks in the second panel here! “Seems that mom’s finally figured out the perfect breeding partner for me? And she’s planning to ambush me with her, sexually? Hot stuff!”

Shoe, 3/4/24

It honestly never occurred to me before this strip, but among his many other terrible qualities, Shoe is definitely a serial workplace sexual harasser.

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Pluggers and Gasoline Alley, 2/25/24

Old people! Do you enjoy the Sunday comics as one of your last pleasures in life? Well, the whimsical “funny pages” are here to remind you that as you age, you will be beset with endless aches and pains, so much so that you will begin to believe that even in your life on Earth, you are experiencing a taste of what the damned go through in Hell. But still, one must cling to this life, imperfect as it is, as it could be swept away from us at any moment and then — nothingness, no more pain but also no more frosting. Something to think about!

Daddy Daze, 2/25/24

And don’t get too smug, young people! The time when your young body begins to fall apart is coming! And sooner than you think.

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Pluggers, 2/13/24

Wow, I feel like the backstory that lead up to today’s Pluggers is even grimmer than usual. Chicken-lady is thrusting this inoffensive but uninspiring plate at her husband, her facial expression seemingly indicating that she’s drunk or angry or confused or maybe all three, belligerently telling him he can shove it up his ass if he doesn’t like it; dog-man’s eyes are wide with shock, as he gingerly reaches out to grab the plate before she erupts. The way they’re both standing in the middle of this room implies that he’s going to take the plate somewhere else, as they retreat to different corners of the house to have dinner in wounded silence. Take it or leave it! Ha ha!

Shoe, 2/13/24

A fun fact is that Shoe and Pluggers were created by Jeff MacNelly, who worked for much of his career at the Chicago Tribune, so I guess it makes sense that Shoe would be a Cubs fan, even though we’ve seen no evidence that sleepy Treetops is a bird-world analogue of Chicago or that baseball even exists in the bird-ruled Shoeniverse. This also just could be something the doctor is saying passive-aggressively, though; if he doesn’t have the nerve to tell Shoe not to smoke cigars in his office, he definitely doesn’t have the nerve to tell him that his high blood pressure has been caused by all those cigars he smokes constantly.