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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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Dick Tracy, 2/12/18

Hey, so, remember last year when the xenophobic Congresswoman Bellowthon tried to pass a law restricting the rights of Lunarians and Lunarian-Americans, but then she got murdered and the legislation never went anywhere? You namby-pamby libs were probably pretty pleased about that, but now that the leader of this alien species is on Earth, smoking fine cigars with a prominent military-industrial complex CEO and casually mentioning that his people are abandoning “Moon Valley” and journeying to our world, planting secret colonies everywhere, you wish Congress had fully funded the Space Wall!

Marvin, 2/12/18

Maybe I spend too much time dwelling on the romance plots in Marvin. I mean, technically, they can be framed as stories about “the sex lives of babies,” but in reality they’re all pretty chaste, and the cartoon convention where infants and animals are given adult-level cognitive capabilities makes everything more or less on the level. Here’s the thing, though: half the time the punchline to these strips are about how Marvin, who has a girlfriend, smells like feces all the time? Because he shits his pants? And enjoys it? And it makes you realize, “Oh, this guy who has a girlfriend, he’s literally in infant. That’s bad!” Anyway, here’s another strip about diaper-wearing babies who poop themselves but also date each other, I guess!

Pluggers, 2/12/18

Pluggers know that a good way to sleep as long as you want in the morning is to unplug your clock so it doesn’t even tell you what time it is. And then when you do wake up, if you have a beard you can paw at it and go “Oh no! How long have I been asleep?” like you’re Rip Van Winkle. It’s a classic bit!

Mary Worth, 2/12/18

WHOA WHOA WHOA TED IS MOVING IN FOR A HUG AND MARY SEEMS PRETTY PLEASED ABOUT IT, THIS IS A SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT AND MAYBE ALL THIS TIME THEY HAVEN’T BEEN TALKING ABOUT “MARKETING” AT ALL???? STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER ROMANCE UPDATES!!!

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Mark Trail, 2/11/18

Man, I’m going to be thinking for a long time about the phrase “a favorite within the public consciousness.” Aren’t you? The next time you dismiss the latest celebrity flash in the pan, won’t you be tempted to say “Fame is fleeting; what I’m looking for is to become a favorite within the public consciousness, you know?” Anyway, Mark long ago told us that elephants are murderous yam thieves, and now we can’t help but visualize dozens of dead sea turtles, rotting in an algae-choked Salvadoran lagoon, while distraught naturalists pick at their flesh trying to figure out what went wrong. Enjoy!

Dennis the Menace, 2/11/18

Gotta admit, it’s pretty menacing of Dennis to remind his father that, the endless parade of one-off houseguests who bear the burden of his darndest-thing-saying aside, the Mitchells only actually know eight people, and almost half of them are children.