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Mary Worth, 2/13/18

Oh no, Mary was only into her hug from Ted when she thought it was a quick goodbye squeeze, and now it’s turning into something more and she’s not into it at all. I guess it was inevitable (it wasn’t inevitable, we could’ve stopped this at any time) that the strip would take on the current cultural moment of reckoning with sexual harassment and assault. I have to say that I’ve already spent way more time than I’m comfortable admitting trying to parse what exactly is supposed to be happening in panel two here. Since this is the chaste newspaper comics, it could just be Ted leaning in and closing his eyes and breathing in Mary’s scent and imagining what it would be like to be in a beautiful, committed relationship with her, but he also might be humping her leg.

Shoe, 2/13/18

Ha ha, heavy alcohol use can result in … tattoos! Tattoos and that’s it. No other health problems, no sir. This strip is heavily invested in the financial solvency of depressing fern bars, so we’re just going to leave it there.

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Shoe, 2/7/18

Hey, so, uh, it’s a real tasty mashup of shapeless joke building in today’s Shoe, isn’t it? There’s two potential ways this joke could actually make sense: Uncle Lou could’ve quit the accounting firm to go work for the Food Network, and now he does the books for the cooks, or he could’ve quit the police force to become a producer for the Food Network, and now he books the cooks. Only the second one works with Shoe’s Goggle Eyes of Horror™. It’s like they started with the “accounting … books” thing and then made their way to a slightly different punchline and then, like, forgot they could go back and change the beginning before they submitted it. It’s so aggressively half-assed that I almost have to respect it.

Gil Thorp, 2/7/18

Sure, Paloma’s angry about the state of her home island, but now she’s getting some insight into mainland politics. Turns out it’s a thin veneer of democratic process that can’t cover up a broken, unresponsive system anymore!

Crankshaft, 2/7/18

America’s response to its out-of-control opioid crisis is growing increasingly punitive — like, did you know that in many states you have to keep prescription meds in the bottle with the original label at all times, making it technically illegal to use those pill organizers? What I’m saying is, Crankshaft will never face punishment for any of his actual crimes, so if his house ends up getting raided by the local SWAT team after his doctor reports his transparent drug-seeking behavior, I’m totally OK with it.

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Shoe, 2/6/18

There are plenty of people of all ages who love all the bands the Perfesser just rattled off here, thanks to the Baby Boomers’ stranglehold on the canon of pop culture — I certainly listened to all of them as a kid. If the Perfesser really identifies with them, though, I guess he’s supposed to be a Boomer, and if his date has never even heard of them, maybe she’s … a literal teen? It’s so hard to tell, because she looks just as beaten down and depressed as every other bird-person in this strip.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/6/18

Ahh, June is doing some snooping around Johnny’s grandparents’ background, and finally we’re going to get some dirt on these suspicious char– oh, a kindergarten teacher? Huh. Well, surely the grandf– ah. Model kits. RC cars and such. Hmm. Maybe the real drama is how much less interesting this can get.