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Funky Winkerbean, 6/2/15

The current Funky Winkerbean storyline has involved Les being reluctantly drafted into helping run his graduating class’s high school reunion, and it’s been duller than most, but I’m kind of intrigued that any work at all has to go into contacting Westview High graduates, since one of the running themes of the strip is that nobody ever escapes the black hole of doom that is this horrible hell-town. I guess some people do? And they’re never spoken about aloud? Because it’s too depressing to imagine that you could leave but then for some reason don’t? Anyway, today we learn that everyone Les graduated with has a Facebook account but him, and I certainly hope they use their social networking time to all talk to each other about what a gloomy and yet somehow also insufferably smug ass he is.

Apartment 3-G, 6/2/15

Haha, I’m loving this out-of-nowhere slam on current James Bond director Sam Mendes. “He’s the worst kind of hack! You tell him American Beauty was the crappiest Best Picture winner in the last twenty years! Worse than Crash, d’you hear me? Worse than Crash!”

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Slylock Fox, 6/1/15

Despite the violence that must’ve accompanied the animal takeover of the world in the Slylockverse, it’s actually amazing how much of human culture has been maintained. The animals live in human homes in human cities, drive human cars, even wear clothes, albeit modified a bit to accommodate their anatomy. No doubt they see themselves like the first Germanic groups seizing power from the faltering Romans in the fifth century — they came not to destroy civilization, but merely to enjoy the benefits of it that had previously been denied to them. Thus it’s no surprise that the animals’ new leadership would leave up the statues of the human warriors of old; after all, they see themselves as those men’s cultural, if not biological, successors. But that surly rabbit teen — he doesn’t know anything about the Before Times. He’s grown up in a world run by animals, and he looks around and sees all these statues of hairless apes and he doesn’t get it, man. Why should he have any respect for these dead symbols when the only humans he’s met are opportunists like Slick Smitty or freaks like Count Weirdly? Slylock might look into that angry face and wonder what exactly and his fellow revolutionaries unleashed; but the future, the baffling future in which the animals would have to blaze their own cultural path, would belong to Ronny Rabbit.

Mary Worth, 6/1/15

“Adam’s been great, Mary! So great that I’m going to take one of these roses, which you’re cutting wearing thick garden gloves so you don’t prick yourself on their many thorns, and I’m going to grip it with the palms of my hands as tightly as I can while I think about how great he is!”

Apartment 3-G, 6/1/15

“Yeah, it’s a threat! I’m gonna come back to this … random street corner … where I just kind of bumped into you by chance … and hope you’re here! So if you’re trying to avoid me, you’ll just have to pick one of the thousands of other street corners in this town! I’m very threatening!”

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Blondie, 5/31/15

This is an extremely disappointing Blondie because we haven’t been privy at all to the drama that led up to it: the joy of reaching the big tournament shattered as Dagwood is yanked from the team, the friendship betrayed, Dagwood’s sense of self-worth destroyed. When the phone starts saying “Herb Woodley” in its robot voice (are there real phones that do this? because that sounds terrifying and awful), we should feel the pent up rage and frustration that Dagwood feels. It would make the pathos of the final row of panels — in which Dagwood’s resentment dissolves into pathetic gratitude at being a backup selection — all the more intense, and the sting of Herb’s final panel contempt all the sharper.

Panels from Mary Worth, 5/31/15

Oh, whoops, looks like Terry physically blocking Adam’s proposal was just a necessary step along the road that will lead to their inevitable marriage. As you can see in panel two, Terry is becoming increasingly unmoored from reality, not even able to trust the evidence of her own senses, which will make her helpless to resist Adam’s advances.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/31/15

“It’ll be fun to watch her try to be nice to people! It’s probably going to be super hard for her. She should just pretend to be nice, like I did to her a couple panels back. It was really easy! Say, I forget, am I the sympathetic character in this storyline?”