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Slylock Fox, 2/6/17

“Kooky?” That’s the adjective you choose for Count Weirdly? “Kooky?” This is a man who’s brainwashes his sapient serpent sidekick so completely that she willingly commits her unborn babies to his cause, turning them into living booby traps and condemning them to a life of crime from the moment they hatch into the world! Look at her face — she’s positive thrilled to watch her newborns kill, and possibly die, to serve Count Weirdly. So yeah, I think I’d go with “history’s greatest monster” rather than “kooky,” thanks very much.

Spider-Man, 2/6/17

“You know … people who love you, who care about whether you live or die. Emotional ties to others that complicate your decisions, especially when it comes to risking your life. It’s a real situation, you know? A real situation.”

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Hi and Lois and Blondie, 2/5/17

Is there anything more embarrassing than making a big, public gesture of your affection for someone else and having it not just rebuffed, but completely ignored? For their Super Bowl party, Hi and Lois have failed to invite any of their fellow damned souls from the Walker-Browne universe; Beetle Bailey, lest you forget, is actually Lois’s brother, and the Hagar the Horrible gang is probably … the Flagstons’ distant ancestors? Anyway, the point is, if it’s possible to bring the Bumsteads, a family from an entirely different intellectual property spacetime continuum, in for the Super Bowl, they easily could’ve done it with Sarge and Lucky Eddy or whoever. But nope, screw their actual family, the Flagstons would rather social climb with Blondie and Dagwood and … Mr. Dithers? Jesus, they invited Mr. Dithers to their party. Probably because he’s rich. Maybe this is like when Tom Cruise pretended to befriend his fellow Scientologist Leah Remini just so he could invite Remini’s pal J-Lo to his wedding in Italy and … where was I? Oh, right, the Flagstons are a bunch of phonies. Meanwhile, in his own actual universe, Dagwood is watching TV with his dog. Enjoy the game, everybody!

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Pluggers, 2/4/17

Pluggers today made me realize that it’s been a long time since I’ve been in a house of worship for non-wedding-or-funeral-related reasons — long enough that it never occurred to me that the same people who infuriate me for blithely texting throughout a movie (WHY WOULD YOU PAY $16.50 A TICKET TO SEE SILENCE, A QUIET AND EMOTIONALLY GRUELLING CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE FROM A MASTER FILMMAKER, ON ITS OPENING WEEKEND, AND THEN BE ON YOUR PHONE THE WHOLE TIME? YOU’RE A GROWN-ASS ADULT! YES, I CAN SEE YOU!) also do it while they’re at church, to the extent that beleaguered clergy have to beg parishioners to put their gizmos in their pockets for just a little while, for pete’s sake, just how flight attendants have to specifically point out that you can’t vape in 30,000 feet over Nebraska or whatever.

And, while my irreligion probably differentiates me from most pluggers, I do have to say that as a person with a hearing aid I very, very strongly related to today’s panel. Like, the ability to turn a hearing aid off is easily one of the top five best things about having one. It’s not that I can’t hear with it off, but … well, it’s sort of like when you open a beer right when you get home from a hard day’s work. Your problems don’t go away, but it takes the edge off, you know?

Shoe, 2/4/17

I know it’s something I harp on a lot, but the emotional disconnect between the jokes and dialogue in Shoe is one of my favorite bizarre things about the strip! Usually this takes the form of the patented goggle eyes of horror in reaction to a punchline, but today’s strip gets even more intense. “Roz, I need something to release all this tension I have” is mildly concerning in isolation; but when accompanied with the Perfesser’s bug-eyed stare, it seems like the last thing you hear a guy say before you become the first victim in his multi-state killing spree.

Mary Worth, 2/4/17

Oh my God, Iris just told Zak she loves him … in German! Safe in the knowledge that sweet, dim, uncultured Zak would never in a million years understand it! This is a delight because it’s a move she chose to make wholly predicated on her boy-toy’s ignorance, but it makes me sad because it probably means she’s going back to Wilbur when he blows back into town. Hopefully he hasn’t picked up any nasty Antarctic venereal diseases!