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Mary Worth, 4/19/17

I know that eventually we’re going to get around to the Hoosiers and their smoking-related marital strife and that will be the “real” part of this storyline, and it’ll be fine, I’m sure, but for the life of me I’d be happy with like six to eight more weeks of Mary and Toby just enjoying the cruise industry’s more pedestrian pleasures and describing them to each other in excruciating detail. Today, Mary is excited about the formal dinner they’re about to enjoy, but wants everyone to know that come tomorrow for lunch she’ll be wearing sweatpants at the buffet, shoveling as much lukewarm chicken down her gullet as she can handle under the harsh fluorescent lights. She isn’t some kind of snob or anything. (She still paid the extra fee for sheets changed daily and “premium access” to the lifeboats, of course.)

Funky Winkerbean, 4/19/17

Generally speaking, I don’t try to write things about teenagers that much, which is good because they terrify and confuse me and I don’t know much about them. But one thing I do know better than this strip, which ostensibly has a teen cast, is that teens do not care for Facebook anymore. I learned yesterday that a cutting thing teenagers call Facebook is “Mombook,” in case you want to feel a kajillion years old!

Mark Trail, 4/19/17

Mark’s kidnapper is in that special intermediary zone of cleverness, where he’s smart enough that he can’t be tricked into saying his name, but not so smart that he realizes that he’s the one with the gun and the sinister agenda so he’s supposed to be telling Mark where they’re going, not the other way around.

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Blondie, 4/18/17

You know, whenever I see a strip with a gag like this, I sincerely hope it’s the end product of a long meeting between representatives of the Fitbit marketing department and the Cayman Islands-based LLC that owns the rights to the Blondie characters and trademarks, at the end of which they agreed on a plan to mutually leverage their brands across platforms, using Dagwood’s well-known humorous “ownership” of the sleeping space to promote awareness of Fitbit’s functionality that promotes good sleep health. Because the other option is that Blondie decided to give some other company free advertising space in the comics, and that’s honestly pretty sad.

Mary Worth, 4/18/17

Haha, Toby, defensive much??? It’s pretty telling that her immediate response to any mention of humans who have experienced a normal emotional pair-bond is to blurt out “My marriage to Ian is not a sham!! People look at a more-or-less beautiful, moderately vibrant young-ish woman married to a rotund chin-bearded early-late-middle-aged academic and immediately think ‘Oh, he’s her sugar daddy,’ and that’s hurtful. For one thing, Ian’s not even rich! Have you seen where we live?’”

Marvin, 4/18/17

Oh, whoops, I guess yesterday’s carpool shenanigans were just the launching point for a whole storyline about various members of Marvin’s family who use him as a tiny, warm body to take advantage of traffic laws that are meant to cut traffic by providing incentives to multiple adults to who would otherwise drive their own cars to share a ride instead. Anyway, I particularly enjoy the way Jeff’s expression shifts from “emotionally numb” to “crushing despair” as his hunky co-worker suggests that the he drive to work with a diaper full of Marvin shit in the car to keep away pesky and presumably squeamish law enforcement officers.

Spider-Man, 4/18/17

“Ha ha, yes, Starlord and his pop tunes! Perhaps you remember the smash hit film Guardians of the Galaxy, whose trailer used Starlord’s walkman playing Blue Swede’s version of ‘Hooked on a Feeling’ to great effect? Well, the sequel’s coming out in just a few weeks, and its trailer features [checks YouTube] Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain!’ Sounds enticing, eh? I certainly hope this giant robot hasn’t ripped Spider-Man’s arms out of their sockets yet!” The sad thing is this is literally the best Newspaper Spider-Man has ever been at promoting a Marvel Cinematic Universe property.

Six Chix, 4/18/17

This woman some years ago went on a “fantasy weekend” to Yosemite, because her fantasy was to fuck a bigfoot. And she achieved her goal! Never give up on your dreams, everybody!

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Marvin, 4/17/17

Far be it for me to claim Marvin is largely pieced together from pre-existing clip art and then dialogue sort of wedged into it. Maybe there’s another explanation for why Marvin’s mother is grinning broadly when she says “Why on earth would you want to do that?” to her father in the first panel. Maybe, for instance, she knows her child is an awful hell-baby and the very idea that anyone, certainly someone who knows just how terrible he is, would want to spend any more time with him than absolutely necessary is, literally laughable. Her crestfallen face in panel two indicates her horror at the sorry state of her city’s transportation infrastructure. “My god,” she thinks, “is traffic so bad that someone would be willing to be alone in the car with Marvin to shave time off their drive? Our Marvin? What a nightmare!”

Funky Winkerbean, 4/17/17

I’m glad we get classroom scenes like this to remind us that not only is Les an awful husband, but a terrible, cruel teacher as well!