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Spider-Man, 2/27/15

Hahaha, thank you, Spider-Man, thank you for wrapping up this storyline in the most pointlessly absurd way possible. There’s nothing about this that I don’t adore. I love that the potential dramatic purpose of Mysterio’s double-masking is undercut by the strip revealing the truth after only one panel, and I sincerely hope the reasons behind it are never discussed or even mentioned. I love the fact that the “Dash” Dashell mask is presumably fixed in that glum expression. I love that he’s got glasses perched on top of the mask, and that those glasses apparently have transition lenses. I love the weird grimace Beck is making as the mask comes off, which is actually the sort of face you’d make if you were wearing a fishbowl full of water over a latex mask. I love the fact that all this time we’ve been set up to think that Rory McCormick, the douchey special effects guy, is Mysterio, but it turns out to be some other dude we’ve never even heard of before this point. The only way I could possibly be happier would be if Spidey pulled off the Quentin Beck mask only to discover McCormick’s face underneath.

Gil Thorp, 2/27/15

Basketball manager/secret coaching prodigy Bobby Howley was gently admonished by Gil at the beginning of this storyline for acting more like a coach than a manager, and since then Gil and Coach Kaz and Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp have appeared not at all, while Bobby has dished out basketball and/or pharmaceutical advice to boys and girls alike. Today, however, we see the limits of his keen mind: while he may see the basketball court as an easily solved equation, clearly that triangular shape of a piece of pizza has got him in over his head. “Well, I can easily fit this end of this slice into my mouth, so I can just keep chewing my way all the way to the crust in one go … WAIT NO TOO WIDE ABORT ABORT ABORT”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/27/15

June is having a hard time figuring out how not to pay attention to Sarah, and Rex is happy to help! “You’ve been busy, but I haven’t, but I still have no idea what she’s doing! Say, don’t we have somewhere to be? Somewhere that doesn’t involve Sarah at all?”

Heathcliff, 2/27/15

It’s funny because the fish feels a twinge of terror because Heathcliff is openly declaring his intention to kill and eat him.

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Mary Worth, 2/26/15

Welp, looks like next year’s Worthy Awards will be a mere formality, as today’s final panel, in which a wild-eyed Amy waves her fist in the air to indicate just how jazzed she is to be marrying a rich dude who will allow her to quit her job, will clearly sweep every category. (I certainly hope she’s also making barking noises like the “dog pound” from the Arsenio Hall Show.) Hanna is happy too, because Dave’s riches have bought Amy access to both time to personally care for her child and hired help to care for her child when she wants to use her time for something else! No more babysitting for Hanna! Also, Dave can buy Gordon all the screens he wants so he never has to look any of his family members in the eye ever again!

I really thought that this storyline had another twist in store, but it’s Thursday and Hanna’s self-satisfied thought balloon has me thinking that this is the plot-wrapping-up week, and we’re going to end with both Amy and Hanna having solved their problems by finding and marrying the right dudes. My only regret is that the whole thing didn’t end in a Shakespeare-comedy style double wedding at City Hall, with Gordon playing the “holy fool” character (a modern version who just stares vacantly at a Gameboy the entire time).

Family Circus, 2/26/15

Dolly looks at a set of rigid metal pipes of varying sizes bound together forever and only capable of producing noise in response to the breath of some vastly larger being and sees a “family,” which tells us a disturbing amount about her own take on her home life.

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Momma, 2/25/15

Momma usually wrings laughs from the wildly imbalanced nature of the relationship between Momma and her adult children: she wants them closer, despite the fact that they’re all kind of terrible, and she herself is terrible to them in various ways, and they pull away. If that doesn’t sound funny to you, then congrats on being a decent human being, but to the extent that the conceit works, it works because Momma is cartoonishly terrible and not at all self-reflective. That’s why today’s panel three, in which Momma watches her fleeing son and poignantly reflects on her own unbearableness, is definitely one of the more depressing things the newspaper comics have to offer today.

The Lockhorns, 2/25/15

The self-loathing both halves of the Lockhorns feel is an integral part of this feature’s shtick, of course. Leroy wants so badly to disappear into comforting nothingness that he can’t even bring himself to photograph his own face.

Mark Trail, 2/25/15

You know who doesn’t go through a bunch of agonized self-reflection, ever? Wolves! Wolves feel really quite good about themselves and their totally rad ability to form an awesome, bad-ass pack and just straight up eat a whole moose. Old Ripper becomes the first Mark Trail animal to get a name other than “Lucky” that I can remember, though like the old mother moose, Ripper is old, because you have to respect the strip’s animal-identification traditions.