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Apartment 3-G, 1/12/12

Welp, as I predicted on Sunday, Ruby is Lu Ann’s bio-mom (I don’t deserve much credit for this, as it was telegraphed fairly loudly). And now it’s all over but the copious weeping, and soul-searching, and family recriminations! Shouldn’t take more than a year or two. However, before we get started, I think it’s worth showing the panel from last Friday that started this hilarious and heart-breaking misunderstanding:

I dearly, dearly hope that Lu Ann’s comment is never explained again, just for confusing larfs. “Poor Lu Ann, it must be terrible to not understand one’s true heritage! Hmm, why is the name ‘Dr. Howard’ sticking in my mind? Is it important? Enh, probably not.”

This shocking revelation about Ruby this week has made me wonder if this whole thing was planned out from the moment she was introduced more the four years ago, which made me dip into my archives to see where my first mention of her was. All I can say is that I’m apparently pretty smart about this stuff.

Mary Worth, 1/12/12

Yes, Mary, we all know that your plan to bring Emily back to your hovel in the woods and bake her into a pie is finally coming to fruition, but perhaps you shouldn’t look so transparently gleeful about it?

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Dennis the Menace, 1/11/12

I never thought about itching the same way again after reading about how powerful and little understood a sensation it really is in this New Yorker article, which features, among other anecdotes, a horrifying account of a woman who had an unstoppable itch on her scalp that was so bad that she ended up scratching right through her skull. My point is that cutting your fingernails short enough that you won’t be able to scratch itches in a satisfying fashion is a 100 percent legitimate concern, and there’s nothing either menacing or cute about Dennis’s request, although maybe Alice’s smirk is supposed to indicate that she plans to do exactly this, as a subtle form of revenge for, well, pretty much everything Dennis has done since learning to walk.

Gil Thorp, 1/11/12

Are you tired of me talking about Gil Thorp yet? Well, too bad, because this is the first storyline that I’ve genuinely loved in years, so you’re just going to have to sit there and take it. For today’s strip, I’d like to point out that (a) most teenagers who want the new Twilight movie “for their girlfriend” (who “lives in Canada,” probably) are almost certainly capable of finding bootleg movies on the Internet, obviating the need to go offer some improbable story to a sketchy Kiwi tattoo artist, and (b) a vision of Batman t-shirt teen alternately crying and masturbating to the latest Twilight film jumped into my head unbidden upon reading the final panel.

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Beetle Bailey, 1/10/12

Since all of the soldiers at Camp Swampy have long stopped being scared of or even vaguely impressed by Sarge’s bluster as a result of decades of exposure to it, we occasionally need an outsider character to show that he’s still a terrifying monster of shouting. We get that today with this poor plumber, who appears to be in a state of advanced psychological shock, or maybe having some kind of fear-seizure.

Gil Thorp, 1/10/12

Oh, man, this is great! Milford’s mildly dodgy tattoo parlor is clearly going to be the origin of every mildly dodgy vice in town, including … knockoff DVDs! I’m not sure who those actors on the cover of TITHNIC are, but I’m guessing they’re named something like “Mutt Damone” and “Kathy Winslow”.

Mary Worth, 1/10/12

Yes, yes, Emily Smith has been saved from a horrible fate, blah blah blah, but what I mainly want to say is: if you can look at the hilarious chase scene going on in the background of panel one and not hear “Yakety Sax” playing in your head, you’re a better person than I am.