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Mary Worth, 6/24/11

Mary Worth continues to prove that just because you have no understanding of the ways humans think and feel and act doesn’t mean that you can’t try to heal their emotional pain! Did you experience a moment of life-shattering public humiliation and emotional trauma? Eh, just try remembering it differently, maybe you’ll feel better. Have you become sexually obsessed with someone who doesn’t reciprocate? Probably it’s because you hate your job! Sure, that totally makes sense.

Jumble, 6/24/11

Kudos to Jumble Jeff for taking the time to meticulously depict both of these fictional bears in their native garments (though I’m assuming he also deserves blame for the unspeakable pun that is the puzzle’s answer). For many years I’ve found Smokey Bear’s habit of wearing jeans and a hat but no shirt deeply unsettling. I mean, if he weren’t wearing any clothes at all, that’d be one thing — he’s a bear, it’s natural enough — but wearing pants means that he casually performs his ranger duties topless, which is a little weird. Not until this moment, however, had I considered the full-on obscenity of Yogi Bear, who wears a hat and a collar and a tie and nothing else. Is he some kind of ursine Chippendale?

I’m also a little unsettled by this apparent superstar team-up between straight-arrow Smokey and known criminal Yogi. Do you think Smokey’s co-worker Ranger Smith feels hurt by this? I imagine that Smokey believes that he’ll teach Yogi about agriculture and that will stop the constant pic-a-nic basket theft. He’s going to be pretty disappointed.

Ziggy, 6/24/11

Ha ha, Ziggy doesn’t understand that in fancy finance talk “buying debt” just means “lending money.” Anyway, long story short, some mid-level member of the Chinese Communist Party is going to be the proud owner of Ziggy’s kidneys real soon now.

Pluggers, 6/24/11

Wait, can pluggers swear? I … I don’t think pluggers can swear. Pluggers complain about other people swearing. Young people. With the hip-hop music. And the baggy pants. And yet here’s a cuss, plain as day. I have to go lie down now.

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Beetle Bailey, 6/23/11

If you’d asked me before today, I would have sworn that nothing could be more disturbing than seeing the Halftracks attempting to spice up their erogenous life with costumed role-play. But in fact, it’s the Army shrink’s suggestion that the General cast his mind back to the very sexiest fantasies he had as a little boy that has me so very thoroughly skeeved out.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/23/11

Good thing the meddlin’ revenooers never come to Hootin’ Holler anymore, as they might inform their colleagues at the EPA about Loweezy’s plan to clear out sensitive wildlife habitat! But even though I’m a coastal elitist, I have to admit that, upon realizing that the local amphibians had begun to master human speech, my first instinct would be to wage a war of extermination against them.

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Mary Worth, 6/22/11

Today’s Mary Worth brings us a valuable lesson on how to enjoy Mary Worth — and indeed, explains one of the reasons why Mary Worth enjoys being Mary Worth. Variety is the spice of life, and thus every meddle is different. If they were all the same, what joy or texture would there be in Mary interfering in the lives of her hapless victims? No, she doesn’t know until she’s in the thick of it whether the meddlees will need to literally drink themselves into the gutter before they’re receptive to Mary’s life-molding or whether they’ll just burst into open sobbing and oversharing the minute she asks her first gingerly probing questions. Do you think Mary’s taken aback that Liza has opened up so easily? Don’t worry, Mary, I feel confident that there’s an emotional roller-coaster of insanity in your future, as Liza imprints on you as her new guru/love object and refuses let you out of her sight.

Family Circus, 6/22/11

The fact that very long-running strips reuse art and even whole gags is obviously not news. Certainly today’s Family Circus panel, which features the red-headed children dully staring at an enormous console TV that they’re way too close to has the vibe of decades-old art, although for all I know it could have been drawn last month (but surely that would have been a terrible waste of effort?). Anyway, it got me thinking about how there must be endless material to be mined from dead-eyed Keane Kids watching television and saying vaguely cute/precocious things about it, so look for this panel to appear again and again, long after most Americans have forgotten that “televisions” used to be a distinct piece of free-standing electronic equipment, rather than a series of screens built into every wall of every home, switching on and off as you moved from room to room, making sure you were never without entertainment.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/22/11

Have you ever seen a movie or TV show where somebody interacts with the main characters without speaking, even though that seems kind of off? Once an actor starts talking, they move up to a whole different pay scale, so generally there’s some financial reasoning behind it. Comic strips don’t really work on the same economic logic, though, so that doesn’t explain why Sullen McMaybepregnant here silently thrusts a note a Les before stalking off. Presumably she’s disgusted beyond words that the entire school has been inexplicably driven into a frenzy of arousal by the Les-on-Susan smooching pic that’s been making the rounds.

The Lockhorns, 6/22/11

Oh, isn’t that cute! Despite it all, Loretta still believes that Leroy will become a beautiful butterfly. I hope he does too, in the sense that I hope that his squat, misshapen husk of a body will one day split open, revealing an enormous, terrifying insect within.