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Shoe, 9/18/18

OK, so, see, if Roz’s boyfriend collected trash, “The Garbageman” wouldn’t be a nickname; it would be a straightforward description of his job. Like “garbagemen” is definitely a word we use to describe sanitation workers, in American English! Though I guess I’m assuming Shoe is using “collecting” here in the professional sense. Maybe he thinks Roz is dating a hoarder, and is trying to be as cruel to her as possible about it! Jokes on him, it seems: in fact, she’s dating one of his fellow newspapermen — and one who doesn’t believe in the pious niceties of bourgeois, “respectable” journalism! Those are some well earned goggle eyes of horror.

Slylock Fox, 9/18/18

So dad is wearing … hairpants? Like a hairshirt, but pants? Isn’t parenting a child who he obviously holds in contempt self-punishment enough?

Gil Thorp, 9/18/18

Ugh, once again football season gets underway without the annual bonfire, a tradition that dates at least back to 2007 but seems to have abruptly ended after the 2015 season. I for one would’ve loved an entire wacky summer storyline about how the school board’s insurance company finally broke it to the athletic department that giant bonfires are incredibly dangerous and they can’t have them anymore, because it would’ve given Gil a chance to be hilariously indignant, would’ve probably ended in some laughable compromise, and would’ve at least acknowledged that this annual tradition stopped happening for some reason. There’s a slim chance that we’ll get a true bonfire before the first home game, but until then I’m going console myself that the jagged white shapes in the background of panel two are billowing waves of smoke rising into the sky from Milford itself, miles away from Oakwood and in the process of being burned to the ground in an orgy of Mudlark-supporting.

Spider-Man, 9/18/18

Ha ha! They were holograms all along! Just like we all figured! The old hologram trick! A classic bit.

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Spider-Man, 9/12/18

God bless this hilarious audience of nogoodniks, who are already extremely riled up and shaking their fists in rage before the meeting has even begun! I’m particularly intrigued by the phrase “so-called crime summit”: is our bespectacled thug questioning the very nature of “crime,” rejecting a label placed on his business activities by a government apparatus for which he holds no respect? Or is he disputing the term “summit,” since the theater setting seems to imply less a meeting of equals seeking consensus than a scenario where Kingpin and Golden Claw impose their will from the stage on a passive “audience” of lesser criminals?

Hi and Lois, 9/12/18

There are, in the end, two types of men in the world, and you have to decide which one you want to be. Are you a Thirsty, who’s so determined to assert his autonomy from his wife that he deliberately gorges himself at lunch to the point of nausea, sky-high cholesterol be damned? Or are you a Hi, who obediently sips a cup of broth for lunch so that by the time he gets home his stomach is empty, so empty, and he can properly stuff himself to bursting under his wife’s cruel, stern eye, asking “Now is dinner finished?” before each course only to be told “Dinner is finished when I say it’s finished.”

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Spider-Man, 9/7/18

Oh, right, so it turns out the secret plan of the Golden Claw-Kingpin partnership is the classic “lure all the other crime bosses to a meeting under the guise of forming a city-wide crime alliance, only to use the meeting as an excuse to massacre your rivals” trick, which you’d think criminals would figure out, seeing at the other people they’re dealing with are also criminals! Anyway, today we learn that the site of this meeting is … the theater where MJ’s hit play Picture Perfect is running, except that it’s closed for structur[al reasons?] and doesn’t seem to have moved elsewhere, so how big a hit could it be, really? Long story short, the criminals Golden Claw and the Kingpin lure to the Mammon won’t be the first to die on that stage, if you know what I mean. (I’m referring to MJ “dying” metaphorically in front of an audience, since I assume she’s a terrible actress.)

Funky Winkerbean, 9/7/18

I’m not sure if Bull is supposed to be actually quite bothered that his record being broken and he’s just being manic and upbeat to cover it up, or if we’re just meant to understand that his grasp on lucidity is becoming more and more tenuous, but either way this is a knee-slappingly hilarious strip! “Starting to sound like a broken record!” Ha ha, polysemy!

Judge Parker, 9/7/18

Some dude just stone-cold getting his neck snapped while some lady looks on, screaming in terror? Sure, why not! It’s not your grandpa’s comics section anymore, baby! Unless your grandpa likes seeing comics page murders! Maybe he does. I don’t know his life, man.

Gil Thorp, 9/7/18

Wow, ouch for Tiki Jansen. Not sure who he is but it sure sounds like he sucks!