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Shoe, 3/10/25

Man, it would be concerning if you were a bird parent from a species that primarily ate fish and your son didn’t want to eat fish, especially considering that, bird-wise, the main way you get fish for your kid is to eat it yourself and then barf it up for them. I can see why you’d write a pleading letter to the editor of the local paper, though it’s pretty funny that said editor would just be like “ditch your ungrateful kid and get with a cat instead.” This may be affected by said editor’s species: Shoe is, as helpfully pointed out by a surprisingly comprehensive table on the Shoe (comic strip) Wikipedia article, a purple martin, a largely insectivore species in contrast to his fish-happy employees Cosmo Fishhawk and Loon. Everything else aside, domestic and feral cats are also one of the main predators of bird species, but the purple martin’s current conservation status is “Least Concern,” so I guess he’s not too worked up about that either.

Heathcliff, 3/10/25

Now that I’m returning to Heathcliff on the regular, I must report that it’s still following its late-era dream logic to surprising and disquieting places. Heathcliff hates dogs, sure. The local dogcatchers are a tight-knit society with their own social institutions, I buy that. Said dogcatcher community respects Heathcliff because of his aforementioned hatred of dogs, makes sense. And so they … get lower back tattoos of Heathcliff’s face? To signal all this information to one another, sexually? Yes, the chain of reasoning holds together, but if the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?

Intelligent Life, 3/10/25

I once cruelly but accurately described Intelligent Life as being “about a number of unpleasant people who are obsessed with ‘nerd’ franchises (i.e., most of modern film and TV entertainment) in the most boring way possible.” I guess I should’ve added a compliment about its one redeeming feature, which is that it’s almost never about pissing and shitting. Too late now, I guess!

Pluggers, 3/10/25

Oh, you’re telling me that a plugger will substitute lower-cost calories when the price of a favorite foodstuff goes up? Are they ever so special and financially rational? Should we tell everyone? Should we throw a party? Should we invite Professor Hal Varian, who’s written extensively on economic substitution effects?

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Mary Worth, 3/9/25

“The past only exists by how you remember it,” Mary long ago told an emotionally scarred young woman, haunted by the man who stood her up at the altar. “Keep only good memories from past relationships, and forget the rest!” says Wilbur, urging his daughter to join him in the comfortable and false world he inhabits. Ah, but Stanislaw Jerzy Lec reminds us that “You can close your eyes to reality, but not to memories,” which to me implies that the power of true memory overcomes any attempt we might make at self-delusion. That long trail of romantic failure each of you has behind you will always be there, burned into your memory, and you cannot shake it. Now, the Westons may whine that this is unfair, and ask why this Lec guy thought he was so smart. It turns out he has a pretty incredible biography with a lot of ups and downs, ranging from the time he wrote the first poem in the Polish language praising Stalin to the time he escaped from a Nazi concentration camp by killing a guard with the shovel he was supposed to be digging his own grave with. And what have the two of you ever done? Dropped a bowling ball on a guy’s foot? Had a funeral for a fish? Pathetic. Rethink your lives.

Blondie, 3/9/25

I assume this fantastic (?) joke (???) simply only would’ve worked in the multipanel Sunday format, but it honestly really bothers me that Blondie did an office-based gag on a weekend. After all, if this strip does a joke about National Dentists’ Day, you can be sure it runs on National Dentists’ Day. I refuse to suspend my disbelief and pretend to think we’re seeing action that’s actually happening on a Tuesday, or, worse, that the naturally lazy Dagwood went into work on Sunday when he should napping on the couch with his knees bent up all uncomfortably like God intended.

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Blondie, 3/8/25

Blondie’s longstanding addiction to obscure holiday themed strips and comics crossovers has achieved an uneasy peace today with its searing hatred of internationalism. Sure, this is a diverse group of women, from America, Australia, Themyscira, Viking-era Norway, the … land of fairy tales where some women are birds? … and so forth, but at least we’re not giving into the U.N. one-world government types and calling it “International Women’s Day”! It’s simply “Women’s Day,” like it was originally when the holiday was first celebrated right here in the USA by [checks notes] the Socialist Party of America oh no oh no oh no

Dick Tracy, 3/8/25

Wait, you’re telling me that the guy with the incompetent nephews … is himself an incompetent nephew? How many layers of nephews are we going to go through in this story??? It’s just like the old saying goes: truly the uncle ….. has become the nephew now.

Archie, 3/8/25

I genuinely enjoy the look on Hot Dog’s face in the third panel here. “Why are you involving me in your web of complex human lies and betrayals? I’m a dog! I truly dislike it!”