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Comment of the Week

After all the other 'Ed doing things nobody visiting NYC would' entries, I have to acknowledge today's strip for verisimilitude: Only a tourist would go to Washington Square Park to buy pot.

—ValdVin
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Grim Tuesday

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Mary Worth, 1/16/18

For those of you who aren’t fully “in the know” on the details of beloved syndicated soap-opera strip Mary Worth, “Santa Royale,” Mary’s home and the setting for most of the action, is a thinly veiled version of the California university/beach town of Santa Barbara — they even use the real names for neighboring places, like Goleta. Anyway, you’ve probably heard about the horrific mudslides in Montecito last week, but you might not know that Montecito too is part of the Santa Barbara area — is right next door, in fact. What I’m trying to say is that while I wouldn’t wish that sort of disaster on anyone in real life, it would be pretty funny in Wilbur, out for a brisk, optimistic walk after deciding to pretend that he has his life together emotionally, were suddenly swept out to sea by a wall of mud.

Pluggers, 1/16/18

Pluggers aren’t afraid of the dark … but they are afraid of that yawning hole inside of them, the one that they can never fill with food no matter how much they try.

Beetle Bailey, 1/16/18

The excuses Sarge has to come up with for all the times he physically abuses the soldiers under his command are becoming increasingly transparent.

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At least he’s not peeing on it, as near as we can tell

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Gil Thorp, 1/15/18

It’s time for a new storyline in Gil Thorp, the strip about high school sports that isn’t afraid to get topical, the strip that was doing storylines about DREAMers way back in 2008, the strip that has the guts to say that head injuries are bad but football is great. Looks like this spring we’re going to be spending time with a couple refugees from Hurricane Maria, one of whom has a real bad attitude about her homeland’s devastation, unlike her brother who’s just a real chill guy. Will all their problems be solved with high school sports? Probably!

Funky Winkerbean, 1/15/18

God, imagine a future dystopia where humanity has ceded its autonomy to a soulless, implacable “machine” — a machine that, for instance, can tell when you’re using the photocopier at work to xerox copies of your new terrible graphic novel about your dead wife so you can personally hand them to your friends who keep saying “the attachment didn’t come through on that email you sent.” Well, you don’t have to imagine it, because it’s here. Welcome to hell, where death by cancer is a blessed relief.

Family Circus, 1/15/18

I know Billy is supposed to be making snow angels in the background, but I’d really like to believe he’s just flailing around out there, rubbing his gross little body all over the lawn, to claim the snow. “It’s my snow, asshole!” he gleefully yells at Jeffy. “You can’t have it!”

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Maybe the other 18 players have already fled the scene

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 1/14/18

The solution to this mystery is painfully obvious (the bat is upside down, you see!) so I’m going to pose a more complex question. Can we truly hold just one of our soccer-playing quartet, who for some reason have put on numbered uniforms for a two-on-two game, responsible for the broken window? After all, they collectively decided to play in dangerous proximity to Chez Beaver. Aren’t they similarly collectively responsible for the damage? This bat is quite the little narc, sowing discord where there should be solidarity and allowing three of these creatures to convince themselves that they’re not on the hook for what in truth they all did.

Curtis, 1/14/18

What sells this strip are the six panels setting up Greg’s quiet ecstacy at having some time to relax on the couch, making Curtis’s loud “rap” music all the harsher violation. I particularly enjoy the second panel in the top row, in which we see that Greg’s relationship with his sofa borders on the erotic.

Spider-Man, 1/14/18

Oh, say, remember how Dr. Connors had the same rare blood type as Bruce Banner, and so Bruce gave him a blood transfusion? Well, it seems they took too much blood from Bruce, and now he needs a blood transfusion! I’m not sure why, if Bruce has the same blood type as Doctor Connor and Spider-Man is able to donate blood to Bruce, he couldn’t have just skipped the middle man and donated directly to Doctor Connor, but that’s neither here nor there. The important thing to know is that the last time someone drew Spider-Man’s blood, a series of comical events led to him briefly assuming the identity of “Gown Man,” a superhero who climbed around on window ledges wearing an extremely short hospital gown, which had predictable results results in terms of everyone on the street below seeing Spider-Man’s junk. Can’t wait to see where this medical plotline’s going!