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Pardon My Planet, 1/30/25

There’s a joke at the core of this panel that is, if not good per se, at least perfectly serviceable — ha ha, her husband is a dick about her cooking so she’s going to poison him! — but it’s assembled in such a shambolic and confusing way that it actually loops all the way through “bad” to “fascinating.” I love the idea of the husband sitting at the dinner table, white-knuckle gripping his silverware and waiting patiently for his wife to prepare his meal, which he already assumes he’ll hate, because of the shows she watches on TV, but also he declines or perhaps refuses to turn around and look at the TV to see if it’s that show that gets his wife to make the food he hates. Add in the fact that the wife apparently needs advice from a literal witch, a woman skilled in chthonic folk magic and also green, to know that pouring liquid from a bottle labeled with a prominent skull and crossbones is what’s going to kill her husband. I dunno, I think if I had that on hand already, I could’ve guessed it’d be bad to use as salad dressing (or good, depending on your end goal) without the TV witch telling me. I’m just an “independent thinker” like that.

Rex Morgan, 1/30/25

Hey, remember back when Estelle in Mary Worth went on a series of internet dates, each more comically unpleasant than the last? Well, Rex Morgan tried to recapture that magic but instead of Summer’s dates being “fun” bad, they were “boring” bad. Classic Rex Morgan! Anyway, as we all know, Estelle ended up in Wilbur’s sweaty arms at the end of the process, but apparently Rex Morgan is pitching as an alternative to the app scene going to a bar and hooking up with your daughter’s English teacher, who’s been harboring many a sexual thought about you since you came to a parent-teacher conference two years ago that you barely remember, what a coincidence, he definitely wasn’t sitting outside the restaurant watching your internet date unravel and plotting his next move.

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Between Friends, 1/29/25

Really kind of depressing that in every panel where we see the Blonde Between Friends Friend’s face here, her facial expression is nothing but grim resignation. She’s not actually getting any joy out of keeping this egg tray. She’s not happy the world is like this, or that she’s like this. But she’s not getting rid of the tray!

Blondie, 1/29/25

I guess it would’ve been a little on the nose for Blondie’s flashback to show her and Dagwood actually saying the phrase in question in their vows, but it’s a little unnerving to instead see them just staring ahead and simultaneously visualizing a big sandwich while the minister blabs on about what Jesus wants their relationship to be like or whatever. Dagwood is doing this because he’s just thinking about big sandwiches all the time, but Blondie … well, I’m not sure what’s going on with her, whether she’s trying to psych herself up to get married to a Big Sandwich Guy or if she’s thinking about spending the wedding night making big sandwiches to feed to him, sexually, or what. Anyway, this wedding sadly cannot hold a candle to the time Dagwood’s parents got him hepped up on ether and tried to force him to marry Blondie’s roommate.

Alice, 1/29/25

Oh, also, Alice has gotten dumped by her boyfriend, a grown man (?) who dresses like a comical child, which has to be pretty embarrassing for her. This is a lady who’s been kidnapped by aliens and flirted at by air conditioners but I have to think she sees this as a low even for the context of the strip.

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Sam and Silo, 1/28/25

You know what would be awkward? If you were a corrupt city official taking kickbacks from a local sporting goods supplier, and one of the things they produced was “rebounders” for soccer practice, sometimes referred to as “kickbacks,” and you pitched them an idea for a small version. That’s pretty much the only circumstance where you’d ever say “Where’s that little kickback we discussed? No, I am not talking about football” to someone on the phone, which would also require you to be using “football” in the non-American sense even though you’re an American. It’s a vanishingly rare scenario, which is why it’s kind of amazing to see it captured in today’s Sam and Silo.

Blondie, 1/28/25

As I long ago noted on here, as a child I read Peanuts anthologies obsessively, and I knew what the context of a sigh was because the characters were always sighing, but I didn’t realize what physical noise was being described so I would just say “sigh” aloud at times when one might sigh, and no adult corrected me for years, presumably because they found it very funny. In my defense sometimes Peanuts would just drop the word in word balloons, so I’m not sure what I was supposed to think. Anyway, in today’s Blondie, I guess Mr. Dithers is supposed to be smacking his lips as he enjoys a delicious donut, but I’d prefer to think he’s saying “Smack!” with the implication being that this delicious donut is taking him to the same state of euphoria that a junkie experiences after injecting heroin into their veins.

Hi and Lois, 1/28/25

A thing I feel very certain saying about Hi Flagston is that he has exactly one friend, and it’s Thirsty Thurston, which means that either (a) they’re on a two-man bowling team and Hi showed up tonight and Thirsty, probably drunk and belligerent, demanded to be captain of the team, and Hi sheepishly backed down, or (b) he’s on a team with a few acquaintances or maybe just people that the bowling league arbitrarily assigned together, and the rest of them decided Hi was a drip and a loser and pulled off some sort of coup, much to his humiliation. I think either of these scenarios would’ve frankly been a more interesting comic strip than this little “oh no, Lois briefly thought the family’s finances were in crisis” switcheroo.