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I mean, aim high, Holly, but jeez

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Spider-Man, 10/26/15

Oh, hey, Spider-Man vs. Namor, remember that whole business? It’s been 11 days since I last updated you and these two guys are still just jawin’ down by the docks, getting ready to maybe someday go over to the U.N. to talk about pollution or whatever. I assumed this was just the strip’s usual go-nowhere pace, but apparently Namor was stalling as he brought out his secret weapon: a poor, sick undersea child who will tug at the world’s heartstrings and cause the surface-dweller leadership to rethink our ocean-polluting ways and hahahahaha I can’t even finish that sentence. Yo, Namor, there are plenty of human children who get sick due to water pollution; do you think we’re gonna care about some little fish-boy? Anyway, undersea life seems like it’s pretty harsh, with no concept of “focusing the positive,” since Namor responds to Pharus’s plea for hope by letting everyone know that, nope, this kid’s gonna die, and the best-case scenario now is that he does it adorably enough to get some kind of toothless UN Security Council resolution passed.

Gil Thorp, 10/26/15

“It didn’t happen to Survivor or American Idol, two shows that launched early in the era of reality television and were very different from anything else on American TV at the time. What do we need? A time machine? A time machine, to go back and launch our show in a less reality-saturated programming environment?”

Family Circus, 10/26/15

Man, I for one really wish we had gotten to see what Jeffy and Dolly did to get themselves expelled from the Keane Kompound, with only their paternal grandmother and God willing to take them in. Was it redhead-related? Did Big Daddy Keane get a revelation that gingers were spiritually unclean?

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Things I can’t get past

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Mary Worth, 10/25/15

I was going to make a joke about how Mary is planning on journeying to New York to pledge her fealty to Olive, our new hyper-evolved Goddess-Queen who will one day enslave humanity with her mind powers, but I can’t get past today’s Inspirational Sunday Quote, from former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, who lost the bitterly contested 1968 presidential election and then apparently went on to claim that, really, nothing in life is better than friendship. He didn’t want to be president anyway. Nixon was fine, and he’s not even mad about losing, since he’s got good pals. Yep, friendship, that’s what really counts.

Family Circus, 10/25/15

I was going to make some joke about how Kids Today can’t conceive of a Halloween celebration without the omnipresent branded characters that have crowded all imagination out of their fantasy world, but then I saw panel one and got a load of Ma Keane’s costume: she’s going as some kind of horrifying pinheaded circus freak.

Panels from Beetle Bailey, 10/25/15

I was going to make a joke about how today’s Beetle Bailey throwaway panels are pretty clearly about how Miss Buxley wants Beetle to have some energy tonight, for sex, but then I got a look at this strip’s attempt to depict ears from behind and ew ew ew ew ewwwwwwww

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God-forsaken Saturday

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Apartment 3-G, 10/24/15

The sad fate of Apartment 3-G is apparently not quite official enough for Wikipedia, but Mark Trail artist James Allen, prompted by my post, got in touch with King Features and got confirmation that the strip is on its way out. This is obviously really depressing to me, but I’m going to try to keep it together and give the strip the best send-off I can, which is to say I’ll mock it with affection till it’s in the grave. At least we’re finally going to get the resolution to the one storyline that’s nagged at us for years: the will-they-or-won’t-they romance between Margo’s parents, who are presumably going to get married in the hospital chapel while a comatose Margo’s respirator whirrs in the background. “I haven’t been a great husband, Gabby,” says the man who was married to someone else when he knocked Gabby up, then forced that woman to raise Margo as her own, then had her bundled away to a private “psychiatric facility” upstate. Oh, hey, remember how said wife referred to Martin as “my husband” during the plotline where she came back and tried to kill him? What if they never formally got divorced? What if this turns into a real Jane Eyre-type situation, with “upstate” just a code for “this hospital where Margo is now, which is probably north of the park or something?” That would be an amazing send-off, honestly, if a crazed Bobbie Merrill were to burn the place down in a fit of madness and kill every last character.

Beetle Bailey, 10/24/15

General Halftrack’s expression of genuine despair, as he pleads with his clergyman to explain why he feels so spiritually adrift, why he’s unable to feel the presence of his Creator, is so vivid and poignant that I felt actively angry about Chaplain Stainglass’s flippant answer. I consoled myself by imagining that he was in fact being very literal. “Ah, yes, it’s possible that you’ve been calling … the wrong number … if you get my drift” [winks] [passes General Halftrack a piece of paper with “WORSHIP LORD MOLOCH” written on it]

Pluggers, 10/24/15

Look, guys, pluggers just have to go to the bathroom a lot, OK? They don’t enjoy getting occasional whiffs of urine or feces while they’re dining. That’s just a rumor, just a disgusting rumor, and they’re tired of you spreading it around.