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Crock, 3/18/25

I kind of admire the thought process that went into constructing the current installment of “The Men Of Outpost 5 Read Letters From One Of The Men’s Hillbilly Hometown.” Obviously, you have this great joke about how the one guy is a dumb hillbilly who may have mastered the mechanical art of tying a shoe but doesn’t understand how the process fits into the larger context, where you generally tie both your shoes at once. But what gets me is how they decided to set that punchline up. What if he’s prompted to reminisce on this subject because his beloved friend and mentor died? What if he’s in mourning? That sure adds a fun little twist to the gag!

Marvin, 3/18/25

Marvin, the comic strip, debuted in 1982, so if time flowed normally for its cursèd inhabitants, then Marvin, the character, would be in his early 40s, and his parents would have long ago forgotten his awful infancy, which only lasted a couple of years, after all, or at least they would have sanded down the edges in constant retelling into a “we can laugh about it now” situation. But time doesn’t flow normally, and Marvin will remain a baby forever, and his parents will neither know the escape of him growing up nor ever truly get used to the horror. Thus the exclamation points in the second panel here: while this is the sort of bad behavior we expect from this terrible child, his parents are forever shocked anew, each psychic wound inflicted never healing into protective scar tissue.

Pluggers, 3/18/25

Pluggers long ago lost the ability to feel sexual arousal. But products? Well, pluggers sure do love a good product — looking at them, assessing them, trying to figure out how much they cost, then either nodding their head at a good price or shaking their heads at how expensive things are these days. They still have those pleasures, at least, even though others have long passed them by.

B.C. and Wizard of Id, 3/18/25

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the courting mores of modern times were mapped onto a previous era — the Stone Age, say, or a vaguely medieval period that also had magic in it? Well, today’s B.C. and Wizard of Id have the answers for you, my friends!

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Slylock Fox, 3/17/25

Yeah, we get it, Slylock is engaged in a long-running and very sexy game of cat and mouse fox with Cassandra, of which this is merely the latest episode, and check out her flirtatious body language as she makes her fake phone call from behind the jukebox, but … sorry, I can’t focus, because that muscular android Betty Boop is terrifying. Clearly that’s the sort of femmebot that, if released from its glass prison, would immediately strangle anyone who tried to control it with its surprisingly powerful hands. If Slylock were serious about Cassandra getting her comeuppance, he would simply allow her criminal enterprise to catch up with her, but as noted, this is all elaborate foreplay, so he’ll ensure that the Boop-o-Matic remains safely contained.

Alice, 3/17/25

Speaking of strange romance, we’re getting some lore here on the Alice aliens: they apparently outsource all flirting and sexual interactions to their eyestalks, which nuzzle one another while the main portion of their bodies discuss more intellectual, aesthetic, and philosophical matters. Seems efficient!

Luann, 3/17/25

Big news, everyone! The comic strip Luann launched this day in 1985, and after 40 years and thousands of installments, Luann has finally kissed a boy. Took a while but I think we can finally wrap this thing up!

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/16/25

One of the most famous and beloved Far Side panels involves a group of vultures sitting in a circle on the ground, and one of them is wearing a cowboy hat and jacket and saying “Look at me, everybody! I’m a cowboy! Howdy, howdy, howdy!” Is it dark? Sure, but the darkness is leavened by the fact that the vulture is being silly in a very specific way, and, somewhat crucially, by the fact that the presence of the dead and now mostly naked cowboy is only implied, his body obscured by the scavengers who are in the process of eating it. In today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, by contrast, a rotting human corpse is quite visible, and the vultures are merely celebrating with bug-eyed, manic expressions as they prepare to feast on his rotting flesh. I don’t think the vibes are anywhere near as good in this one, to be honest.

Blondie, 3/16/25

Today’s Blondie, like a substantial majority of Blondies, is pretty forgettable, but I do really enjoy Blondie’s deadpan “uh-huh” in the dead center panel. You gotta imagine that being married to Dagwood, or to any of the primary characters in legacy comic strips, is, you know, a lot.