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Mary Worth, 10/11/23

Wow, this current Mary Worth storyline is really upping the moral stakes from “Dogs: Are they good, or should we encourage them to fight to the death” to “The Man: Should he have it stuck to him, or should be he be respected by all?” Since, as former Marine and law enforcement officer, Keith is very much the Man, we can see that this brand new father-daughter relationship has now hit its very first conflict. Sadly, it seems that even their shared love of root beer can’t bridge the gap: Keith is spitting out the remains of his last swig, disgusted that he could possibly enjoy a beverage beloved by a radical like Sonia.

Beetle Bailey, 10/11/23

Honestly, have we ever seen Beetle out of uniform? I can only think of one instance, which was part of a Sarge nightmare sequence, and say what you will about Beetle’s look there, but it wasn’t casual.

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Blondie, 10/10/23

I once saw an interview with John Singleton and Stephanie Allain, the producers of the movie Hustle and Flow, about a scene where the characters kick a woman out of the house they’re living in, and how physical to make that confrontation, and they settled on using as a model Fred Flintstone gently yet firmly dropping Dino on the front stoop in the opening credits of The Flintstones. Fred’s act in turn has a context in the time not so long ago when people’s pets freely roamed outside much of the time and in particular were not expected to stay indoors at night, though dogs at least usually got their own little house in the yard for shelter. This was an arrangement that might still hold in rural areas of the U.S. today but has been unheard of in cities and suburbs long enough that I found it puzzling when I watched decades-old Flintstones reruns in the early ’80s; but legacy newspaper comics are the most ossified form of cultural production known to science, and so Blondie was still sticking with it as late as 2007. Today, finally, in the futuristic year 2023, we have confirmation that Daisy lives inside full-time with the Bumsteads (though frankly we knew even back then she slept indoors some nights). Honestly the most unrealistic thing happening here is that Elmo knows what a “doghouse” is.

Gasoline Alley, 10/10/23

I don’t want to sound like a killjoy but, talking bears aside, the moral of this Gasoline Alley plot seems to be “if you find a child and don’t know where their parents are, and the child seems to like you, you can use trickery and force to stop the evil government from attempting to reunite the child with said parents,” which seems, uh, not great? Obviously it would be worse if anyone read Gasoline Alley and it had any chance of influencing any opinions about anything, but still.

Dennis the Menace, 10/10/23

Setting whatever menace Dennis thinks he’s perpetrating here aside, we need to acknowledge his “dentist” is clearly just Mr. Wilson, who has “disguised” himself by shaving his mustache. As a retired postal carrier, Mr. Wilson lacks any of the skills necessary to be a safe dental practitioner, but I fear that’s exactly the point.

Hi and Lois, 10/10/23

Sure, working as cartoonist for a legacy newspaper comic is probably not that creatively fulfilling and doesn’t pay very well either. But when it comes to turning an annoying experience you had into a “joke” that you can be sure literally hundreds of people will read, it simply can’t be beat.

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Mary Worth, 10/9/23

An opinion I’m coming around to more and more is that it’s kind of silly to expect comics as a medium to be “realistic,” as they have to impart a lot of plot and character details in a very compressed amount of visual/textual narrative space; that’s why it’s genuinely fine for Elmo to be walking around in his full football uniform even though nobody would do that in real life. In this scenario, it’s actually fairly natural for these two characters to be dealing with this confrontation in different ways — Keith trying to work his way back to the moment this story he’s learning about for the first time began, while Sonia tries to fill in a blank space in her family history that she’s lived with her whole life — and the dialogue doesn’t have to be naturalistic, really. But I’m sorry, I will never get over Sonia talking like an unctuous talk show host. “I’m curious… Who is my dad? What makes him tick? How’d he get so beefy? We’ll continue the conversation, right after these messages.”

Dick Tracy, 10/9/23

This Dick Tracy stab maniac plot is taking a detour into tweedy academia and rare book intrigue, which you’d think would be the sort of thing I’d be into but mostly it’s just bringing up a lot of residual grad school trauma. Still, I think it’s worth pointing out that they’re introducing a new villain (?) who’s just blatantly Cate Blanchett. Not sure if this is an effort to turn the strip into Dick Tárcy so that the uninitiated seek out Todd Field’s masterpiece Tár — now available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video, at no additional cost for Prime subscribers — but as a certified Tárhead (that’s like being a jarhead, but for Tár) I heartily endorse the move if so.

Dustin, 10/9/23

Dustin’s dad’s family, his good-paying job, his comfortable suburban life … absolutely none of that inspires in him any emotion other than misery, anger, and dread. The only joy he experiences comes in a short, intense physical burst when binges on something sweet, and even that is incredibly fleeting. I’d feel bad for him, if he weren’t so incredibly unlikeable.

Shoe, 10/9/23

Normally I roll my eyes at overly labored Shoe wordplay, but I have to admit that a cultural history of boomerangs called Comeback would be a huge hit at airport bookstores everywhere, and would get even more buzz once people found out a bird wrote it.