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Dick Tracy, 11/26/19

Oh, wow, a couple of beloved comics characters from a cancelled strip are being revived, in … Dick Tracy, what an extremely surprising development! I won’t deny you the pleasure of taking your own journey through Steve Roper and Mike Nomad’s Wikipedia page, in the course of which you’ll learn that it was originally a wacky Native American minstrelsy strip called Big Chief Wahoo that morphed into a hard-hitting adventure strip starring two white guys, written for decades by Allen and John Saunders, the father-son team who also wrote Mary Worth for most of that stretch. I’ll only note that we seem to be out of the strip’s original continuity — its run ended with Roper and Nomad in their 60s and Roper standing over the grave of his dead wife, who divorced him from an insane asylum and gave birth to a daughter she never told him about — and that Proof Magazine (which does investigative reporting and not, like, articles about geometry, I think) must have a rental insurance premium as high as Woods and Wildlife’s if Steve’s extremely chill reaction to his car getting blown up is any indication.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 11/26/19

I always find it funny when repeated tropes/running gags with some basis in reality just drift further and further from their original germ of truth until they veer into truly nightmarish territory. Like, dogs are territorial animals and sometimes distrust strangers coming onto their turf, which is why they can be aggressive towards postal workers, meter readers, and other outsiders who have reasons to visit hundreds of homes a day; but the form this conflict has taken in the world of Mother Goose and Grimm is that Grimm, a sapient dog who can think in English sentences, hungers for mailman flesh.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/26/19

“They’re all exceptional — in the sense that we had to make exceptions to our policies to hire them, because most of them did very poorly in medical school. Ha! I’m kidding, of course. Fully two-thirds of our patients survive surgeries here, probably you’ll be fine.”

Six Chix, 11/26/19

Oh, this is nice! This lady’s friend is a ballerina and got a high-profile role, so she’s coming out to support her and watch the big performance! If anyone knows what the “joke” in this strip is, I’d love it if you could shoot me an email explaining it to me.

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Mary Worth, 11/2/19

Oh, gosh, hey, I haven’t kept you updated on what Wilbur’s been up since he decided to have “just a little sip” of whisky to “take the edge off [his] nervousness” before his big double date with Estelle and Iris and Zak! Here’s what he’s gotten up to: he polished off that Macallan and replaced it with … what looks like … cough syrup? Let’s say cough syrup. Then he drank a lot of the cough syrup, for that “purple drank” buzz the kids love. My only worry about next week is that he’s so cartoonishly drunk that Estelle is going to refuse to go on the date with him, though I guess that if Zak and Iris are patiently waiting at the restaurant and Wilbur shows up 20 minutes late by himself and very, very blotto, it would be even funnier.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 11/2/19

I guess if you had asked me who the main non-Grimm character of Mother Goose and Grimm was, I’d say “Mother Goose,” obviously, it’s right there in the name, but if you asked me what her job was, I’d say, “…I’m not fully sure she has one?” But in fact it turns out that she’s that Mother Goose, and honestly this is a big surprise because you’d think she’d be a lot richer. Gender pay gap aside, her stuff is very popular, and in the MGGiverse she’s still alive so it isn’t in the public domain!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/2/19

REX [who is very much in the hospital right now]: Uh, no, I’m, uh, out on my boat. I mean: Dr. Morgan is it out on his boat. This Dr. Morgan’s voicemail. Please leave your message at the beep. [Rex makes a “BEEP” noise and then stops talking]

Beetle Bailey, 11/2/19

Ha ha, that kooky Beetle Bailey just dug a grave for himself! How’s your weekend going?

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/27/19

Maybe it’s because I’m not a parent, but I don’t really understand the “joke” in this strip, which seems like a fairly obvious solution to a relatable problem? Is it because modern-day middle class safety-obsessed parenting would never allow a baby to sit up on a table where he could fall off and hurt himself, even though the simple but wise folks of Hootin’ Holler know that as long as adults are paying attention he’s in no danger? Or is that this is a wonderment to Snuffy and his father because Hootin’ Holler has only recently mastered “chair” technology?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/27/19

“Oh, so they think we’re not doing enough medical education in this strip?” said the Rex Morgan, M.D., creative team. “What if we just went into great detail about all the different kinds of medical tests you can get? How’s that for medical education, motherfuckers? Are you not edutained?”

Family Circus, 10/27/19

“You can tell by how depressed he looks! His heart is always crushed by grief whenever he’s not doing the one thing that brings him joy — watching professional football on television — and nothing, not even tending to his beautiful house or spending time with his family, can cheer him up.”