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Beetle Bailey, 3/7/16

So after a minute or so I gave up on trying to parse Sarge’s dialogue here as a joke, and then maybe 45 seconds after that stopped trying to parse it as actual sincere advice, and finally settled on just trying to figure the contexts — geographic, professional, social, whatever — in which today’s strip is taking place. Like we know from previous strips that Sarge has an office, though this one is looking more Endless Void-y than usual. But has Beetle just kind of … wandered in? To get weird, incomprehensible platitudes? From his commanding officer, who is reading them off a piece of paper, or possibly just holding up a blank piece of paper? I’m really going to have to grapple with the content of this joke to figure out what’s happening, aren’t I?

Mary Worth, 3/7/16

Aww, isn’t this sweet! Mary and Jeff are going to the Bum Boat … their place! And after that, they’ll be crashing every funeral they can, or at least I assume so based on Mary’s outfit. (In Santa Royale, crashing funerals is the closest you can get to hitting all the hottest goth clubs.)

Marvin, 3/7/16

Marvin’s usual M.O. is to mine laffs out of the title character’s constant pooping and peeing, which is gross but has a shred of respectability because, after all, he’s a baby! Pooping and peeing in a diaper is like a huge part of babies’ whole deal! But now we see the slippery slope we’ve been on all this time: if it’s OK to joke about Marvin and his butthole and what comes out of it, why not joke about his dad’s butthole now too, huh? Why not? Can you give me one good reason why not? Basic human decency, you say? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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Heathcliff, 3/6/16

Right there in the third panel of the middle row is where Heathcliff straight-up murders a fish. I love its facial expression — not terror, but grim resignation. “Welp,” it seems to be thinking, “I guess I should’ve done more with my life. Too late now!”

Dennis the Menace, 3/6/16

Dennis sure has been on a reign of defecatory terror lately. Money? Art? All the things that separate us from the animals? Dennis will crap on it. Dennis will crap on all of it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/6/16

“I’ve never lived anywhere else! And neither will you, now! You can’t leave the property! There’s a curse!”

Panel from Hi and Lois, 3/6/16

ha ha ha punk rock dude, you’re in a band that plays Eagles covers

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/5/16

The “uh” in Rex’s word balloon in panel two is an exquisitely placed detail. It’s the moment Rex acknowledges that he’s losing control of this conversation. He’s ostensibly interested in buying this lady’s possible deathtrap of a house, so it makes a certain sense that she’d try to figure out his finances. Asking about his kids, though? This is a personal conversation now, and Rex barely wants to have personal conversations with his wife. “Can I just drop this plate and run?” he thinks. “Just head straight out the door, leaving shattered china and lemon cake strewn everywhere behind me, and never look back?”

Family Circus, 3/5/16

I absolutely love Jeffy’s look of heavy-lidded contempt here. “Girl,” he’s thinking, “you and I both know these are mashed potatoes. Don’t get all up in my face just because I had the idea to malaprop over dinner tonight before you did. I’m the one grandmas across America are going to be hanging on their refrigerators this week, OK? Me.”