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Family Circus, 9/22/19

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think the joke in today’s Family Circus is too subtle for me. Is it that they both look smug in the final panel because they each think they’ve pulled one over on the other — Ma Keane because she’s talked Jeffy down to a goldfish, Jeffy because the goldfish is what he wanted all along, but he “went big” with his requests so that she’d be more willing to get him a goldfish? I don’t think Jeffy’s actually smart enough to pull that off. I think Ma Keane is looking smug because she talked Jeffy down to getting a goldfish, and Jeffy looks smug because he realized he can eat the goldfish.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/22/19

Oh hey, in case you forgot, Buck, who’s having a new baby with Mindy, already has an old baby — what scientist call a “teen” — from his previous marriage (not to the lady who shot him in the head, the one before that). Anyway, here Buck is having a man-to-man talk with his teen son about how great it is that his teen son knows how to poop in a toilet. They seem like they have fun!

Shoe, 9/22/19

I really love how completely depressed this lady looks here, just utterly wrecked by how poorly the evening has gone up till this point. Clearly the date is unsalvageable, so why not open the dinner conversation with “Hey, you ever eat anything that just gave you the shits real bad?”

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Shoe, 9/18/19

So many Shoe punchlines are met by goggle eyes of horror, and honestly there’s plenty of justification for that, but I really like the expression Roz is wearing here, which is sort of a grim, sly smile. “That’s right,” she’s thinking. “Marci went to Las Vegas with her man and they totally had sex. Procreative sex.”

Gasoline Alley, 9/18/19

In a development somehow even more baffling than the weeks and weeks and weeks Gasoline Alley spent on scrapbooking, Gasoline Alley has decided to spend God knows how many weeks discussing the very real and fascinating condition of synesthesia by focusing on a new character, a physician’s assistant who claims his synesthesia allows him to feel his patients’ ailments, which isn’t even close to being a real thing. Still, if it’s an avenue for this strip to get into some “the HUMAN MIND is the ultimate trip, baby” visual territory like it is today, I’m willing to forgive a lot.

Mark Trail, 9/18/19

“Kathmandu isn’t the primitive, out-of-date city the world thinks it is! Is it still a little naive? Possibly. Has the mayor been convinced to pay a substantial portion of the annual budget to promote the city’s modernity in what he’s been assured is a widely read and universally beloved American comic strip? Well, yes. But ‘primitive’? Definitely not!”

Pluggers, 9/18/19

The primary facts you need to know about a plugger’s family members in order to keep abreast of their lives are the various ways in which their aged and ill-treated bodies are falling apart.

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Judge Parker, 9/16/19

OK, let me let you in on some “Hollywood insider” information: I’m afraid that spending three days telling a couple of unrepped aspiring screenwriters your convoluted life story of spying and betrayal does not mean that the movie that’s going to exonerate you will be opening nationwide in time for awards season. I’m not sure how often along the long, winding path to production April’s gonna need to blow back into town to threaten someone with a gun: when our gals try to get an agent? At meetings with Netflix execs who see it more as a series? When they get the first round of producer notes telling them the protagonist needs to be more likable? This could be a lot more work than she’s bargained for, and she might want to look into getting an apartment in LA.

Six Chix, 9/16/19

I honestly appreciate to work put into actually making the grawlixes look like real physical objects, but to me it has the downside of trying to read them as a rebus and figure out what the swear word is supposed to be. “Screw poop”? “Screwy shit”? “Screw turd”? I feel like I’m so close, but not quite there.

Hi and Lois, 9/16/19

Hell yeah, Trixie feels good about how she looks and does not feel constrained by the gender binary. You go, kiddo!

Shoe, 9/16/19

It took me a few seconds to see the flowerpot that Biz is holding in panel two here, and so I parsed “bouquet” in the sense of “odor” or “smell” and assumed that the poor old man had the literal small of death on him. Like, just the odor of an embalmed corpse that he couldn’t get out of his nose. Anyway, let’s all have a fun week, everyone!