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Six Chix, 7/1/21

Man, I don’t want to contradict this extremely confident-looking woman, but I’m not sure I’d refer to a wound that’s quite clearly gushing blood and radiating a crown of pain as a “teeny-weeny paper cut.” But maybe that’s the point? Maybe the point is that you too can overcome any injury, no matter how dire, simply by refusing to acknowledge it and focusing your mind totally on how you, and not your weak, contemptible body, shall be the ultimate victor. This will help you achieve true greatness, at least until you pass out from blood loss.

The Phantom, 7/1/21

Longtime readers of this blog and/or Phantom trufans remember Savarna, the vigilante anti-pirate sea captain with whom our hero had a flirtation during a stretch when the evil Chatu tricked the Ghost-Who-Is-Strictly-Monogamous into believing that his beloved wife was dead. Anyway, turns out she’s been imprisoned in Rhodia’s notorious Gravelines prison for a little light assassination of Rhodian military leaders, so the Phantom’s off to rescue her! You might remember Gravelines as the very same prison where he assisted a jailbreak just a few months ago, that time freeing a pal who works in Mexican law enforcement. Everyone else in there, though? They’re going to have to wait on an Amnesty International letter-writing campaign, which with any luck could lead to a strongly worded U.N. Security Council resolution. Hang tight, guys! Colonel Worubu’s working on it!

Mary Worth, 7/1/21

I’m retracting my previously stated concerns about Drew’s coffees. This is a much better use of them than trying to get him to drink them and appreciate it or whatever, please proceed.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/20/21

Since Rex Morgan plots move in excruciating slow motion, we’ve all basically been waiting for weeks now for this moment, where best-selling but writers-blocked graphic novelist “Kyle Vidpa” gets Sarah’s epic fan letter (which almost certainly contains extensive drawings and plot suggestions for future Kitty Cop installments) and realizes it’s genius. There are two potential futures here: one is that “Kyle” steals the ideas for the new book his publisher demands, and the other is that he brings in Sarah as a “guest writer” and she achieves riches and universal acclaim. The first route seems unlikely since the story so far has gone out of its way to show that “Kyle” is a nice guy with a sweet wife and doting parents and a good friend in Buck Wise, who is sadly the center of the Rex Morgan, M.D., universe now, while the second starts to get us on the track of “Sarah is a terrifyingly talented and uncanny child-adult” that Terry Beatty amnesia’d his way out of when he took over the strip. Seems like we’ve painted ourselves into a real corner, how will we get out of it? (PREDICTION: It won’t be very interesting.)

Hi and Lois, 6/20/21

Today in “strips that don’t usually make me laugh for the intended reasons but did today” is Hi and Lois. I absolutely love the contrast between how happy Hi looks in the imagined version of this carefully programmed Father’s Day that was clearly designed by a five-person committee and how completely overwhelmed he looks in real life contemplating how exhausting this is going to be.

Panels from The Lockhorns, 6/20/21

Speaking of irony-free praise for comics, the Sunday Lockhorns grab-bag had not one but two bangers today. The first one manages to pull off two gags (Leroy was snoring loudly in church, Leroy is transparently ogling some other woman) without feeling like it’s putting a hat on a hat. The second one is just laser focused on a single, beautiful joke about how Leroy was seriously injured in a car accident.

Six Chix, 6/20/21

Wait, so, is this how matryoshka dolls reproduce? The big doll births a smaller doll inside herself, possibly hollowing herself out in the process, and then that doll, still entirely enclosed by her “mother,” produces a smaller internal doll, and the sequence goes on like that, excruciating birth following excruciating birth? And can we safely assume this is an act of parthenogenesis, with no male doll involved at all? Happy Father’s Day indeed!

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Blondie, 6/3/21

THING I LIKE ABOUT TODAY’S BLONDIE: The little anthropomorphic power-lifting mascot for Power Burger, holding aloft a barbell with hamburgers for weights! It’s simultaneously pretty cute and a little menacing, which is exactly the sweet spot you want for this.

THING I DISLIKE ABOUT TODAY’S BLONDIE: The fact Dagwood and Herb are just chowing down on their power burgers right there in the front seat of the car. Are there no tables inside Power Burger where they could enjoy their meal? Are there no parks or public spaces in their bleak exurb where they could enjoy a burger outside in the nice weather? Can they not even go home to eat? Are they ashamed?

Six Chix, 6/3/21

Hmm, I’m guessing this strip is taking the reasonable position that single-use plastics are, on the whole, bad for the environment and we should try to phase out their use. But if that was the aim, maybe they shouldn’t have made the single-use plastics look like a bunch of cool party guys, whereas the ecologically virtuous containers are a bunch of sourpusses? Just putting that out there!

Mary Worth, 6/3/21

Remember, folks, there are two different kinds of absent fathers in the world: fathers who are absent because they’re off doing virtuous things, like doctoring, in which case you’ll turn out fine, more or less, and fathers who are absent because they’re criminals, in which case you too will grow up to be a criminal. Sorry, criminality runs in your blood, I don’t make the rules!

What I do make, however, is requests to turn your attention to faithful reader Wander’s beloved Mary Worth and Me blog, where he and his wife have recreated Ashlee’s stunning photo shoot. If you’d like to be one of the “cool kids,” I request you do the same and send me the pics!