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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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Crankshaft, 2/5/19

The sad thing is that this doctor probably spent a lot of time thinking up this zinger, but never said it out loud to anyone to make sure it actually made sense outside his head. “Get it, because you’re … going to make the person you’re calling pay … when you die? Or wait, maybe you’re the one getting the call in this scenario. Look, just eat less cheese, OK? Cut … cut back on the cheese, is what I’m saying.”

Six Chix, 2/5/19

There’s definitely an angle at which a wine bottle is held to the lips where it goes from “a jaunty swig” to “guzzling as part of some terrible emotional crisis,” and we seem well past it in this strip, to the extent that I’m very worried that that huge knife is so close at hand.

Gil Thorp, 2/5/19

God, Gil is so thrilled in panel three, it’s unseemly. “I knew it!” he thinks. “I knew this little twerp was suicidal! See, I can so connect with these losers emotionally. In your face, haters!”

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Beetle Bailey, 1/23/19

Did … did General Halftrack die? RIP General Halftrack, you will always be in our memories.

Crankshaft, 1/23/19

Is … is Ralph about to die? RIP Crankshaft’s friend Ralph, you will always be in our memories, and we will cringe sympathetically when Crankshaft makes an extremely off-putting malapropism at your funeral.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/23/19

“Black Friday” is what the Montoni’s staff calls it when the depressive episodes afflicting the inhabitants of Westview sync up and everyone just stays in bed all day and orders pizza.

Mary Worth, 1/23/19

Oh my GOD, the winking is working. Resist, professor! Don’t let your insatiable hunger for extremely mild flirtation ruin your marriage, or your career!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/23/19

Wow, I guess we’re about to learn that kids from broken homes — even kids saddled with the name “Brayden” — can be just as prissy and judgemental of human frailty as Rex Morgan himself! I think we’ve all learned a valuable lesson about stereotypes here.

Six Chix, 1/23/19

Gotta hand it to Six Chix: I spent so much time trying to figure out whether or not “to Monday to Sunday” was a typo — like, was there originally supposed to be only one day named but they changed it and accidentally didn’t delete the original day? or is it somehow part of the joke, like they’re having their Sunday girls’ night out on Monday, or vice versa? — that I never ever got to the part where I had to try to figure out what the fuck this has to do with her son moving back home. You win this round, Six Chix!