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Dick Tracy, 2/8/10

Dick Tracy has been even more incomprehensible than usual lately, and what I have been able to understand has just irritated me, but I do read it diligently, in case any gems pop up that ought to be shared with my readership! And lo and behold, panel two is just such a gem. “…Not everyone loves you, and you must die.” Couldn’t this sinister, gnomic pronouncement be uttered about each and every one of us? None of us is so lovable as to earn the affections of all, and each of us is mortal! Of course, most of us won’t be terribly maimed by an exploding Stradivarius, with a square-jawed fascist saying something pithy over us as we die in agony, for which we can be thankful.

Luann, 2/8/10

Speaking of people nobody likes, it’s Luann! It actually took me a minute to get my head around the punchline here (i.e., everyone will finally know Luann DeGroot, who will be in disguise, as a Puerto Rican); I at first assumed that we were meant to laugh at Luann’s cheerfully proposed brownfacing. Still, I rather think that her classmates will remember her for her performance, if only as “that girl who got the school picketed by the National Council of La Raza.”

Popeye, 2/8/10

Speaking of incomprehensible and irritating, Popeye just ended one of its stories that I half paid attention to and is about to start another one in which I’ll probably be equally uninterested. Still, you have to admire this strip for showing that even a plot that is extremely grim and all too real for too many people today — a desperate attempt to hide the extent of your financial ruin from your family, who depends on you economically — can be made hilarious through ersatz dialect. “I yam out of monies!'” Ho ho ho!

Marmaduke, 2/8/10

Look, lady, if you keep marrying them, he’s going to keep killing and eating them. I’m not sure why this is such a hard concept for you to grasp.

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Mary Worth, 2/7/10

Uh oh — it looks like Dawn isn’t going to sit back just acquiesce to losing her father’s affections to some scam artist! It seems that she is going to try shock therapy by finding the one person who can be guaranteed to terrify Wilbur back to his senses: erstwhile romantic rival Martin Clark. Sure, he’s been dead for years, but that will make the ultimate confrontation all the more harrowing, as Dawn rigs up the rich man’s corpse to move and speak like a marionette. “Look at me, Wilbur!” Martin will say, thanks to the ventriloquist lessons Dawn’s been taking on the sly. “I’m a charred, reassembled cadaver, and yet Abby would still choose me over you!”

Blondie, 2/7/10

This right here is seven panels of Superbowl Sunday inanity punctuated by one glorious moment of complete madness. I suppose that longtime readers of Blondie are supposed to know that spinning around on one’s head is an indicator of extreme, uncontrollable emotion of some kind, but to the casual viewer, it would just appear that Dagwood, Herb, and Daisy have chosen to express their football-related outrage with a stunning display of eerily synchronized breakdancing. Which I for one am totally in favor of.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/10

You know who I just realized that I totally don’t get at all? Berna! She’s Rex and June’s receptionist and she runs a successful salon of some sort and she uses Yugoslav generalissimo Tito’s recipes to dominate the local restaurant scene? Why would such a power broker need a relatively menial job behind a clinic’s front desk? Perhaps she uses it to drum up business for her salon. “Honey, trust me, Western medicine can’t do a thing about those split ends. Here’s my number.”

Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing how this strip attempts to make a guy named “Toots” who has a stripey rugby shirt, a goofy little beard, and a lot of hair gel into some kind of threat against Rex and June’s carefully constructed bourgeois order.

Marvin, 2/7/10

Since we only get a single glimpse of Marvin’s dad in this strip, in which he appears to be a good 15 or 20 feet away from his terrible little son and not getting any closer, I’m guessing this is less “father/son bonding” and more “let’s bring the hateful monster outside and leave him there until he ‘accidentally’ freezes to death.”

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Mark Trail, 2/6/10

I may have missed this earlier, but it appears that the hilariously surnamed Parker brothers are hilariously named Moe and Joe. What whimsical parents they must have had, to give them rhyming names! Clearly the only way they had to rebel against their twee upbringing was to grow facial hair and generally dick it up out on the lake, with their big motors. Still, we can see a bit of their wacky heritage out on display in the rapid-fire shirt exchange they made between panels one and two, just for absurdist fun. Mark and Senator Hatcher just stand there with their hands manfully on their hips, their low-key masculinity offering a counterpoint to their desperate antics

In panel three, Joe, or possibly Moe, shows that he’s well acquainted with the most up-to-date way to effect political change, which is to buttonhole one of your elected officials and scream at him.

For Better For Worse, 2/6/10

FBOFW reruns are like comics methadone: not as good as the real thing, and yet I still can’t seem to taper off. I do enjoy them for their sociological insight into late ’70s/early ’80s Canada, anyway. Today we learn what the main characteristic of a dark, seedy Montreal jazz club of the era was: omnipresent menacing mustaches.

Marmaduke, 2/6/10

Come now, Marmaduke’s lovingly curated collection of human femurs is a work of art, not a mere job. I mean, I at least hope that nobody’s paying him for it.