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Family Circus, 6/2/23

Nextdoor, the social network that’s like Facebook except instead of people who you actually like or at least know it’s full of people who happen to live near you, isn’t exactly a hotbed of positivity, but last summer, a nice lady posted a comment along the lines of “I’ve really been noticing the new trend of shorter shorts on men, and I just want to tell the gentlemen in the neighborhood who are partaking: I see you and I appreciate you.” I had just gone in for some shorter new J. Crew stretch chinos myself, and I have to wonder: was she talking about me? I guess I’ll never know, but I’d like think so. But none of us hipsters could hold a candle to Billy’s coach here, who quite clearly was drawn in another decade altogether. What do you think the original caption to this one was? I’m thinking “Can we delay the start of the game, Coach? My dad has to smoke an entire pack of cigarettes and also doesn’t want to hang out with me.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/2/23

Look, non-union Jughead equivalent: I’m not going to say I’m happy that Funky Winkerbean was finally put out to pasture, but I am frankly glad to no longer be thinking about convoluted comic strip timelines, so you can just keep your theories to yourself, buddy.

Marvin, 6/2/23

Wow, grandpa looks smug as hell! Not sure if that means that he is on the History Channel or he isn’t, but either way it’s an unpleasant vibe.

Mary Worth, 6/2/23

Damn you, Lyle Lovett! You’d better not eat that dog!

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/1/23

Many, many years ago, God, so many years ago, what have I done with my life, is this all there is … wait, what was I talking about? Oh, right! Niki first showed up in this strip in the mid-’00s, which in the grand scheme of things really wasn’t very long ago at all, when you think about it, and back then he was a little punk with a weird star-shaped haircut and a troubled home life, and who wasn’t above doing a little light erotic banter with either June or Rex if that’s what it took to climb Glenwood’s socioeconomic ladder. And what would that skinny kid think of the hunky young man before us in today’s strip, who has respectable hair and thinks it’s a little “funny” for a guy to wear graduation robes? Those things are a bit too much like dresses, you know what I’m saying? Why can’t we all just wear sensible black polo shirts, the preferred garment of normal teenagers?

Marvin, 6/1/23

My least favorite aspect Marvin is obviously all the pissing and shitting jokes, but another thing about it I don’t love is that the strip refuses to settle on a specific age for the title character. Is he a baby? Is he a toddler? Can he talk in a way that adults understand? Is he in day care? School? Does he have homework? Can any of these life phases be reconciled with the fact that he still pisses and shits himself on the regular? Because, to be clear, he definitely still pisses and shits himself on the regular and he will never stop.

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Gil Thorp, 5/30/23

One of the things I’ve always respected about baseball (the men’s version) is that, as with all sports, sometimes a level of disrespect is shown by one player to another that demands fisticuffs, but generally speaking those fisticuffs are extremely desultory, with all the players fairly quickly forming a huge mass in the middle of the field and just kind of shoving each other. My favorite part is watching the relief pitchers in the bullpen do the calculation on how long the scrum is going to last and then slowly jogging in to make an appearance if it doesn’t break up quickly enough. Anyway — and hopefully everyone understands that I’m saying this as a feminist ally — I feel like the girls of Mudlark softball could learn something from the typical low-stakes MLB brawl, because they are going at it, with roundhouse kicks and punching people in the face and such, which seem like the sort of things that could earn you a multi-game suspension at minimum.

Beetle Bailey, 5/30/23

Look, man, I hate to be the one who’s more of a purist about a comic’s characters than their creators current maintainers, but Rocky’s one-note characterization is that he’s a rebel who loves the rock music. He’s not some dork who walks around a metal detector! That’s Chip Gizmo territory!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/30/23

In other news, most of the teens in the Rex Morgan gang of teens are finally graduating high school! And thank God, because by the look of them they’re all well into their 30s.