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Sam and Silo, 8/12/24

Man, for a brief and shining moment, I thought we were going to start the week with a truly exciting Sam and Silo moment. “Now what?” asks the mayor. “Look at our badges, Mayor,” Sam replies. “We are the armed forces of this town, those dedicated to protecting the community from violence with violence, decorated to reflect the honor in the eyes of the people that this status bestows upon us. It’s up to us to push aside the degenerate ‘leaders’ produced by the failed democratic system and bring the unified and purified nation forward into modernity and success. You’re under arrest for treason and there will be no trial.” Unfortunately, instead we’re just setting up more comical Sam vs. Silo squabbling. As if that’s going to do anything to help replace the collapsing liberal consensus with the New Order!

Hi and Lois, 8/12/24

You think at first that the reason why the twins want to put a stop to this little reverie is obvious: their parents are imagining a universe where their kids never existed and, to judge based on their facial expressions, are absolutely loving it. But in fact, it’s much bleaker: the children demand an absolute monopoly on the whimsical contemplation of any counterfactual scenarios within the household. Adults are restricted to linear, reality-based thought processes that can help them be economically productive and provide for their children. You can see why visualizing a child-free household is so appealing to Hi and Lois, which ironically makes it all the more important to the kids that they put an immediate stop to such thoughtcrime.

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Six Chix, 8/11/24

Honestly, to me, this didn’t seem like a very desperate measure at all! It seems like she just mentally recited a nursery rhyme and that allowed her to exercise superhuman power over the weather. Who knows, though, maybe she’s exhausted herself from the effort. Maybe she won’t be able to move out of her chair for hours. Maybe she won’t have the powers to deal with some truly catastrophic climactic event down the road and thousands will die because she wanted to read outside for an afternoon! Lots of world-building possibilities here.

Marvin, 8/11/24

“Ah, so you say the constant shit and piss jokes are wearing you down. Well, uh. What if a dog had fleas. What if you told a dog not to take its flea collar off, but it did anyway, and now it has fleas. That’s a joke, right. Like, structurally, you definitely would look at that and say ‘That’s a joke,’ right? Legally speaking, if anyone tries to not pay you because you’re being paid to write jokes, I mean.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/11/24

So Parker decided to not file charges against Randy after learning the latter had been brutally beaten by his own father. I guess we have a long and emotionally fraught but ultimately fascinating journey ahead of us as we explore the limits of forgiveness and restorative justice and learn whether the cycle of violence can ever be truly broken. Oh, wait, what’s that? You’re saying that Randy mysteriously left town and we’ll never have to deal with him again? Huh. Well, that’s a lot tidier, for sure! I guess all our problems are solved, once again!

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Dick Tracy, 8/10/24

It looks like Dick Tracy is finally getting back to the “How is B-tier villain Silver Nitrate doing in the joint?” plot they teased us with last year, and the answer is, uh, not good, I guess! You know, there’s lots of questions that I think would be fun to see Dick Tracy explore, like “How would cryptocurrency work in the heightened world of Dick Tracy,” but there are others that I don’t think would be fun at all and would actually be pretty depressing instead, like examining how someone who doesn’t seem like a hardened, violent criminal would do in the traumatizing hellscape of the U.S. prison system. Still, I have to admit that once I squinted enough to read all these scary prison whispers, “Dude, stop farting!” made me laugh.

Gasoline Alley, 8/10/24

“Wait, what? Comics readers like it when a beloved character starts hoarding small animal corpses? Gross, but these numbers don’t lie. I guess that’s our next storyline, if we want to stay relevant!” –the Gasoline Alley creative team, probably