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Six Chix, 6/24/16

It’s very sad seeing this grim future environmental dystopia whose inhabitants consider a scattering of trees in an open field to be a “forest.” This comic serves as a warning that merely “liking” activist posts on Facebook does not bring about meaningful political change.

Marvin, 6/24/16

DemonCat is a regular poster in the comments section of this very blog, and a little Googling has shown that all of these are the usernames of regular commenters on King Features’ official Comics Kingdom site, which is where Marvin is hosted. So, congrats, DemonCat and everyone else! You got a shout-out from Marvin! May God have mercy on your souls.

Judge Parker, 6/24/16

Wow, maybe the Parker-Drivers are more business savvy then I thought? They know that modern affluent consumers aren’t looking for mere products; they want stories and experiences, which means that they’ll buy Neddy’s amateurishly designed clothes because it makes them feel connected to the celebrities they idolize and vaguely patriotic for buying something Made in the USA! They’ll buy them at least once or twice, anyway, long enough for Neddy to book enough revenue to make the company attractive to some international conglomerate that’ll move the whole operation to Bangladesh.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/24/16

Wait, did Mopey Pete just say “may-soan” or “may-son-ee”? This is going to be bothering me for days.

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Hi and Lois, 6/23/16

Because the Flagstons are a a stereotypical upper-middle class family living in the suburbs in what appears to be the ’50s or first half of the ’60s, I’ve always assumed they’re Episcopalians. The Episcopal Church has a page on their website that says they believe in justification through faith, though they don’t use the “faith alone” formula, and anyway, even the most hardcore Calvinist sees good works as flowing naturally from true faith. Nice try pushing antinomianist heresy, Ditto!

Pluggers, 6/23/16

You’re a plugger if technological advances have made the services you need to live inaccessible to you.

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Mary Worth, 6/22/16

I don’t want to engage in any stereotyping, but my understanding is that Japan is a more reserved and stoic culture than the United States. Thus, I would have to assume that those in Japan who survived the terrible tragedies of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident would like few things less than to have some American lunge at them in sympathy, Wilbur style, and try to get them to emote for “I Shouldn’t Be Alive!”, his terrible and widely syndicated newspaper column. Anyway, pretty much all you need to know about Mary Worth is that our upcoming storyline is much less likely to be “Wilbur rambles around Japan re-traumatizing earthquake victims” and more likely to be “Mary replies to someone who wrote into a newspaper advice column.”

Family Circus, 6/22/16

The “Billy subs for his dad on Fathers Day” bit has a long and storied history in the Family Circus, but does it usually last an entire week? Anyway, the layers of metafiction in these exercises are always exhausting — like, grown-up Jeff Keane is pretending to be the 7-year-old version of his real-life brother subbing for their father, who died in 2011 — and this strip just adds some messed up family dynamics to the mix. “No, it was Billy who made a crude fat joke about your child-self, Dolly! Billy, age 7!”

Phantom, 6/22/16

Looks like Kit Jr. (or Kit XXIII, I guess) will be spending the next four years in Tibet, cut off from his home and family. So at his goodbye party, he’s enjoying the sort of Bangallan treat he’ll be missing: a raw unpeeled potato, fresh from the bowl!