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Heathcliff, 3/11/14

One of my favorite Heathcliff running gags is “Heathcliff hangs suspended in midair, about to land on his victim and slash at their tender, exposed flesh, but in that terrible moment a member of Heathcliff’s family takes the opportunity to drolly explain what’s about to go down.” We saw it before when some visitors made the mistake of revealing their canine sympathies, which seems like the sort of thing that would piss Heathcliff off, and thus I assumed his attack was self-directed. However, I doubt Heathcliff has much by way of cultural-linguistic peeves; instead, it’s his cranky old owner who seems smug that this young bro-sayer is about to get a faceful of claws. Is it possible that Heathcliff’s access to the family finances comes at a price, and that price is the willingness to do awful violence to the family’s enemies?

Family Circus, 3/11/14

I was going to go on this long riff about how the answer to this question depends on how far artificial intelligence will advance and your opinion on the likelihood of a coming Singularity, but then I realized this is Dolly we’re talking about, so: no, sorry Dolly, the phone will still be smarter. Much, much smarter.

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Gil Thorp, 3/10/14

Uggg, you guys, Gil Thorp has been so boring this basketball season. One of the Lady Mudlarks used to be a dancer, and there are videos of her dancing on YouTube, including one where she has an unspecified “wardrobe malfunction,” and people are gross to her about it, and that’s it! And that description, I realize now, makes it sound a million times more interesting than it’s been in practice. I mean, this is an Actual Serious Issue facing Kids Today, but it’s been so weirdly linear and repetitive, and so focused on dancer girl’s brother’s attempt to protect her and/or her sexual purity, that I can’t be bothered to take much of an interest. At last, though, we’ve reached the point in the season where the Coaches Thorp have to make a half-assed attempt to solve their kids’ problems, so they’re going to … force everybody to upload embarrassing/sexually explicit videos to YouTube? Sure, why the hell not, nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan vis-à-vis high schoolers’ fragile egos and a series of lawsuits against the Milford school district.

Apartment 3-G, 3/10/14

This “oops, Tommie’s brand-new fiancé is dead” plot is pretty rushed and underbaked, without much for us to get interested in, and Margo is treating it with exactly the amount of emotional investment that it deserves.

Mary Worth, 3/10/14

“I’d invite you in, but Tommy may be asleep. And when I bring paramours back to the apartment for loud, kinky sex, I want him awake to hear it! It’s the only thing that will motivate him to get a job so he can earn enough to get his own place.”

Slylock Fox, 3/10/14

How would you describe the relationship between Max and Slylock? I’d say Max is Sly’s “assistant” or “long-suffering sidekick” or … wait, what? “[Max’s] hero, Slylock Fox”? Oh, man. Oh, that’s … man. Is he even getting paid for all this?

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Beetle Bailey, 3/9/14

Today’s strip is a harrowing tale of what happens to a character stuck for more than 60 years in the highly structured and repetitive world of a peacetime military base/a comic strip. Offered the opportunity to spend some unstructured time without his commanding officer, there’s literally only one concrete idea Beetle can come up with: see how many chocolate milkshakes he can ingest. Panel five, in which he bumps up against the limits both of his stomach volume and his imagination, is one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.

Crankshaft, 3/9/14

Nobody likes Crankshaft or his family, for obvious reasons. Though they still get invited to social functions out of obligation, their hosts generally go out of their way to let them know how unwelcome they actually are.

Six Chix, 3/9/14

Here is today’s Six Chix! It’s about snowman cock.