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The Phantom, 2/16/19

Tragically, the Nomad’s teen daughter would rather hurl herself off the roof of the Bangallan Consulate than live torn away from her family, which she now knows was a nest of terrorists all along. This will be doubly awkward for our heroes. It will make Heloise’s escape from the country, with the President in tow, all the more suspicious if her helicopter zooms away from the site of a public and gory suicide; plus, Kadia was a Bangallan flag rank officer, which means her next of kin is entitled to a generous military pension. Looks like the Nomad’s prison commissary account will be fully stocked!

Spider-Man, 2/16/19

Sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date on the action in Spider-Man! Killgrave had his full powers restored and was about to force Spider-Man and Luke Cage to kill one another, but fortunately MJ managed to completely disable his near-omnipotent voice by whacking him in the throat with a small piece of metal. And if you think it’s kind of unsatisfying that our superheroes were saved by a completely non-super-powered ally, don’t worry: she also did it entirely by dumb luck. Anyway, I assume Killgrave has been permanently defeated by this extremely mild throat injury, seeing as everyone is just kind of standing around chatting about it rather than attempting to, like, cover his mouth or tie him up or something.

Dick Tracy, 2/16/19

I honestly can’t work up much energy to appreciate or even recap the two or so storylines going on in Dick Tracy right now, but I have to admit that I’m intrigued by the apparently introduction of a new one, about a sportswriter … who stabs.

Mary Worth, 2/16/19

Just want to point out that Ian had a clear chance to say “No, Toby, of course I wasn’t having an emotional affair with Jannie” and he 100% did not take it! I mean, technically an emotional affair has to involve reciprocation, but still.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/16/19

Brayden is lucky he has that sweater to ward off the desert cold, but Rex? Rex just got to smugly correct someone by saying “That’s a common misconception,” and the glow from that will keep him warm for hours.

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Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody! Which of today’s valentine-themed comics is the most depressing?

Blondie, 2/14/19

Is it Blondie, where the title character is an eternally youthful bombshell yet still needs to go to increasingly grotesque lengths to elicit the sexual interest of her food-obsessed husband?

Beetle Bailey, 2/14/19

Is it Beetle Bailey, where the title character has fallen asleep and his girlfriend is using him like a sex doll, but for feelings? (I somehow find the glass on the end table here particularly evocative; I assume Beetle, committed to never ingesting any stimulant that might impede his ability to doze off, took a few sips of room temperature tap water before slipping into blessed unconsciousness mid-date.)

Mark Trail, 2/14/19

Is it Mark Trail, where Cherry wistfully remembers the time where there were romance comic strips, the sort of comic strips where a character might get her emotional and physical needs met once in a while, you know?

Six Chix, 2/14/19

Is it Six Chix, where this lady is on a date with a sock puppet? You know, the extremely normal and relatable situation where you meet someone and they turn out to be a human arm inside a sock that has eyes sewed on it?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/14/19

In fact, to find true emotional fulfillment in today’s strips, we need to go beyond the world of traditional romantic attachment. For instance, imagine that you’re a ham radio operator who lives out in a desolate wasteland. Not a lot of opportunities to go on dates out there, of course. But now imagine a plane full of people suddenly arrives, their cell phones useless. They need to be able to communicate with the outside world somehow … using some kind of radio apparatus … perhaps one operated on an amateur basis. This is it. The moment has arrived. Other people dream about the day they stand at the altar, before their family and friends, to be united forever with their beloved. You’ve been dreaming about this.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/12/19

I’m really enjoying Rex’s grim facial expression as he slides safely to earth here. Brayden may have a weirdly adult affect, but at least he’s letting out a rowdy “whoa!!!” Rex, meanwhile, is thinking back to his time in grade school, when he was surrounded by other children who didn’t treat slide-time with the extreme seriousness it deserved. Now he’s going to show them how it’s done, by God.

Gil Thorp, 2/12/19

Oh, whoops, it seems that it’s just the prospect of therapy that has supercharged Mike Filion’s basketball skills. But now that he’s doing great on the court, maybe he doesn’t need therapy at all! You know what they say: winners don’t use drugs, but winning is a more powerful drug than anything the scientists at GlaxoSmithKline could come up with!

Family Circus, 2/12/19

Not sure who this ginger is or how he managed to wander into the Keane Kompound, but Ma Keane is clearly taking no chances of any unauthorized interactions transpiring between him and her brood. Is he here to steal valuable Keane darndest-thing-saying intellectual property???