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Hi and Lois, 3/2/23

I don’t know, man, I don’t think anyone elaborately folds up a handkerchief into a pocket square, its daring bright red color chosen specifically to match their tie and the buttons on their suit jacket, because they mostly plan to blow their nose into it. It’s OK to admit that you want to feel snazzy once in a while at your office job, Hi! You look good and your kids should admit it!

Rex Morgan M.D., 3/2/23

Oh, are you tired of all the gross romance stuff in the current plot where Truck woos a diner owner? Well, good news: the strip’s other diner owner just walked into the diner, and hopefully we’re going to get some diner shop talk. What’s the best chicken friend steak recipe? What do people typically pay a line cook around here? You got a good menu laminator guy? Boy, I’m getting excited already!

Judge Parker, 3/2/23

Just to be absolutely clear: Judge Parker is not a strip where you see anything interesting happen. Judge Parker is a strip where you don’t see the interesting things happen, but you do see people emotionally processing those things, very loudly, forever.

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Mary Worth, 3/1/23

Uh oh! Looks like Estelle is running into the dark side of dating a hot, animal-saving, ivory-tinkling hunk like Dr. Ed: he has other obligations, like to the animals he has to save, or the ivories he has to tinkle, or whatever. Hey, Estelle, you know who won’t stand you up on a date? Wilbur! He’ll always be there for you, even if you don’t want him to be! Sorry, those are your only two choices, I guess!

Crock, 3/1/23

Every classic comic strip needs to have a longtime married couple who hates each other to remind readers that heterosexual monogamy is a crushing prison, and in Crock that couple is Grossie and Maggot. Usually they just hate each other in a “fun” way, like with quips and such, but their facial expressions in today’s panel let us know that every moment of their existence, in which they’re forced to remain together forever in a strip that will keep going out in reruns indefinitely, is an agonizing one.

Shoe, 3/1/23

Every once in a while I need to remind you, my faithful readers, about the ways in which I suffer for your entertainment and my craft, so I’m going to tell you that my very first instinct upon reading today’s Shoe was to do some online research on whether cloacas have sphincters that allow birds to hold in their poops or if they just have to let it go as soon as it’s ready. Anyway, the material I found was very gross, and the answer is that they can hold it in but not for anywhere near as long as mammals without risking injury so they generally don’t, so yes, Shoe is being literal here, the staff of the Treetops Tribune just let it rip around the office wherever and whenever they need to.

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Gasoline Alley, 2/28/23

One of the fascinating things about the current state of AI is that in science fiction, we imagined that robots would be able to dryly give ultra-correct answers to concrete questions but struggle with nuance, emotion, and (for some reason) contractions, while what we have today are chatbots like ChatGPT that will respond to your questions in fully idiomatic English paragraphs full of confidently delivered vague bullshitting and outright errors. Similarly, I think it’s funny that this is a strip with a talking bear that seems to be fluent in English but gets hung up on the idea that the bear might not understand some pretty basic idioms, when it should be focusing on laying the worldbuilding groundwork for the coming Human-Bear Wars, in which our ursine foes combine their massive strength with their newfound ability to communicate abstract concepts to one another to become an unstoppable fighting force.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/28/23

Remember, Snuffy only recently awakened his father from a Rip Van Winkle-seque sleep that lasted for who knows how many decades, so this punchline is literally true and very poignant. Pappy Smif is a man ripped out of his time! All his contemporaries are long dead, as is every detail of the world he thought he knew.

Dustin, 2/28/23

Hey, were you worried that Dustin’s parents don’t have much of a social life? Well, they do! It involves hanging out with other old people who also hate and resent their children.

Dennis the Menace, 2/28/23

Wait, is it supposed to be somehow menacing when Dennis reveals that his mother thoughtfully tidied up the house before company came over? What … what are we even doing here, guys.