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Six Chix, 7/21/23

When I started this blog [mumblety mumble] years ago, there was still a prevailing ethos that comics strips were, in fact, for kids, even though most of their readers were actually adults, and part of my job, as the Comics Curmudgeon, was to bring to your attention the occasional instance when a comic strip was very obviously not for kids. Anyway, today it’s [mumblety mumble] years later, and that prevailing ethos has largely been cast aside, and not replaced with anything yet because the old world is dying and the new world is struggling to be born, but we’re all gonna sort of keep on going in the meantime, so I’m still going to use this blog to tell you when a newspaper comic strip does a joke about piss stuff. “What’s wrong with me?” wonders a tree sadly, watching all its fellow trees getting pissed on. Not sure if we’re supposed to think the other trees are also sapient or, if they are, whether or not they’re into getting pissed on. Look at all that piss, though! They really just went and … drew it, huh.

Judge Parker, 7/21/23

I’ve definitely criticized post-Woody Wilson Judge Parker of being pretty low stakes, so I have to give the strip credit for really jacking up the stakes in an almost logarithmic progression lately. Oh, did Sam and Abbey’s sex vacation get derailed when someone rammed into their car? Oh, did the person who rammed them abandon a small child? Did the child’s kidnapper show up with a knife? Oh, are all of them going to get mauled to death by a fucking bear???? Tune in tomorrow when all life on Earth is wiped out by a massive asteroid impact, probably!

Dennis the Menace, 7/21/23

Dennis would certainly recognize a picture of the mustachio’d grandfather we see visiting fairly regularly, so I assume that that’s Alice’s dad, and Henry is showing Dennis a photo of his dad, who is dead, which makes this one of the most menacing Dennis responses I think I’ve ever seen.

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Gasoline Alley, 7/20/23

Look, I’m not saying I’m in favor of the Machines declaring themselves “superior” and then forcing us to consume medications of an unspecified variety. What I am saying is, maybe we should let them start with Rufus and Joel just to see what we’re up against before we really start working to get the resistence up to speed.

Beetle Bailey, 7/20/23

Look, I’m not saying that Beetle and Miss Buxley’s relationship is definitely a sexless sham meant to deflect curiosity about the orientation of the former and deflect male attention from the latter, and that Beetle can’t even be bothered to maintain consciousness when they spend time together. What I am saying is that it’s interesting that Miss Buxley, a woman who wears a little black cocktail dress and pearl necklace to work every day, has now decided to start dressing like this on their dates.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/20/23

“Like riding a bike right through man’s eye, ha ha! Anyway, he’s blind now.”

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Gasoline Alley, 7/19/23

I always respect Gasoline Alley’s commitment to doing shambolic, pointless plots that seem to go on forever, and we’re in the middle of a real stemwinder at the moment. To recap: Rufus is still in the hospital due to his head injury, still has amnesia, and is still showing more skin than I’m comfortable with. Today’s strip is noteworthy because of the comical terror in which these two rustics regard the Automatic Robotic Techno-nurse. This can’t be the result of sheer ludditism, since they’ve taken technological advances like CAT scans in stride in the course of their medical adventure, so it must be that they’re shocked that anyone would go through the trouble of building a humanoid robot that carries pills and decanters in its hands for this purpose, when an automated and wheeled cart would be much more efficient and easier to implement.

Dick Tracy, 7/19/23

Speaking of plots that go nowhere, Dick Tracy is in the middle of a plot that has been going so nowhere that I haven’t bothered featuring it here much, though I will tell you that there was a whole week where Dick became obsessed with a chunk of plaster found at a crime scene that was from a very specific Art Deco decoration on the front of a very specific building. Anyway, you’d think a guy that much into historic urban architecture would at least consider that the story behind moving trucks showing up in a largely abandoned warehouse district might be “gentrification” rather than “crime.”

Judge Parker, 7/19/23

Good news, everyone! A sweaty guy in a suit holding a surprisingly large knife has shown up in Judge Parker, and there’s never been a soap opera plot that couldn’t benefit from that kind of development.

Gil Thorp, 7/19/23

Gil Thorp has an intermittent tradition of doing wacky summer plotlines like “Coach Kaz becomes a rock star’s bodyguard” or “Marty Moon gets grifted at golf” or “Gil does a charity pro wrestling match with a guy whose angle is that he has Alzheimers.” But will any of those be able to hold a candle to 2023’s Summer Of The Throuple?