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Beetle Bailey, 7/28/16

Poor Otto is already forced to wear clothes and walk around on two legs in a grotesque parody of a human being. But for me, having him wear a watch is a bridge too far. What’s the greatest thing about being a dog? That you never have to know what time it is. That you live according to the natural rhythms of the world and your body, not the micro-segmented increments of the day that we humans have spend centuries measuring with increasingly distressing efficiency. This saddens my dog-loving heart!

Marvin, 7/28/16

Though not as much as I’m saddened by this week’s Marvin, in which Bitsy the dog becomes obsessed with his own mortality, in a plot similar to the episode of the Disney Channel show Dog With A Blog that I talked about last month, hmmmm. Anyway, today’s strip reveals that, before he dies, Bitsy yearns to kill.

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Mary Worth, 7/27/16

Since we’ve already established that Tommy and Iris look uncannily alike, this is a genuinely great way to show their different life trajectories: Iris, working hard to finally get her college degree, and Tommy, enjoying is Vicodin breakfast, along with his regular food breakfast, sitting in almost the exact same post. It also looks a lot like one of those anti-drug campaigns dreamed up by squares who actually think studying hard is cool, but doesn’t really transmit the intended message to most people. Like, sure, kids, you could spend your mornings writing down a bunch of facts like a god-damned nerd, or you could lazily eat cereal and literally escape from the pain of this world, which I think most of us would agree sounds pretty great. My favorite touch is how Tommy is enjoying his coffee out of a mug that says “MOM” on it. Too bad mom isn’t there to drink out of it herself! Because she’s at the library at breakfast time! What a loser!

Marvin, 7/27/16

Dog heaven is apparently just a infinite series of small cages where dog souls are boarded for all eternity. That’s still an improvement over dog hell, which is an endless sea of urine and feces.

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Shoe, 7/26/16

Oh, man, way to stick it to opera, am I right? Or, wait, no, maybe it’s actually sticking it to lowbrows who don’t like opera? Either way, this is a strip that clearly doesn’t care what toes it steps on!

Gil Thorp, 7/26/16

I’ve decided to stop worrying about Gil Thorp’s school year plowing merrily along in the final week of July and just enjoy the spectacle of Barry Bader rejecting all opportunities to Step Away From The Brink Of Monstrous Assholism. Today, we learn who the real culprit was in Boo’s death: no, not Barry’s drunk-driving dad, but physical media. CDs! They’re annoying, and out of date, and also deadly.

Six Chix, 7/26/16

Wait, so who exactly tossed this dead fish into the toilet? And who’s flushing it? And what is that purplish object the fishbowl is sitting on? And what did Uncle Billy, who almost certainly spawned in a tank in a pet store, know of the sea? I have a lot of problems with the world-building in this incredibly depressing cartoon about dead goldfish, is what I’m trying to say.