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Hagar the Horrible, 7/14/23

Wait, did we know that Hagar was bald under his omnipresent trademark horny hat? I did some deep research (went to my advanced archives search page, looked up “bald” for Hagar the Horrible strips, didn’t find any mention of it, looked up “hat” and “head” but there were too many hits and I didn’t feel like going through them all) and have come to the conclusion that I at least did not. Someone is probably going to drop a triumphant link to me talking about it in 2013 or so in the comments, so it’ll be interesting to see if Past Me agrees with Present Me, because Present Me kinda hates it. At least we won’t have to look at bald Hagar very much in the future, because those trolls are very much going to kill him, right? And eat him? Maybe not in that order?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/14/23

Say what you will about Rex Morgan, M.D., but it does a pretty good job with facial expressions, in my opinion! Like, take Rex in panel two — I feel like this is nicely capturing the two contradictory impulses rising within him: “Ha, do these rubes think I would ever attend a social event at their home, they’re even dumber than they look” and “If next week they’re having yet another drunken rager and they haven’t invited me, I am 100% calling the cops.”

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Mary Worth, 7/13/23

Do you think this warehouse is the same one where the famed Operation H-Town shootout went down way back in ought-nine? You know, the one where Scott, the heroic cop who was in love with Dr. Jeff’s sad sack daughter Adrian, got shot and ended up in a coma, which finally inspired her to accept his marriage proposal, but then he regained consciousness so she had to go through with it and eventually they sort of vanished from the strip? Anyway, my point is that there can’t be that many crime warehouses in a small community like Santa Royale, so it’s probably the same one or pretty close to it, and you can understand why these police officers, remembering the tragic night when they almost lost one of their own, are surprised to find a bunch of non-dead dogs in there. I guess this town really is gentrifying nicely!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/13/23

“Say, you know, one way to deal with that problem would be if your kid suffered some kind of physical trauma that resulted in amnesia, just a whole chunk of your child’s mind and experience wiped conveniently away. Probably the sort of thing that should be done under the supervision of a medical professional, if you want to go that route. My fees are not very reasonable, but you’ve already said that you’re rich, so I assume that’s fine.”

Blondie, 7/13/23

Does it work in those Hallmark movies? Hallmark movies, a genre that stereotypically panders to the fantasies of its female audience? And in those movies, men get out of chores by complimenting their wives’ physical appearances? And that works, you say? Hmm. Hmm.

Zits, 7/13/23

“He’s been a teenager since this comic debuted 26 years ago! Why would he start aging now? It doesn’t add up!”

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Rhymes With Orange, 7/12/23

One of my biggest beefs with several of the more popular religious cosmologies is the concept of hell: the idea that anything you could do in a finite lifetime could be worthy of infinite punishment just seems wildly unbalanced to me. (Honestly nothing we do could possibly be good enough to merit infinite reward either, but I have a lot less problem with that because I’m a big softie.) Theological sophisticates will tell you that the real punishment you get in hell is separation from God’s grace, but I’m willing to bet that most people who believe in hell think it consists of very real and very agonizing endless physical torture, which makes the whole thing even more abhorrent to me.

Now, I’m not such a scold that I’m can’t appreciate cartoonish depictions of hell — like, I don’t think you should drop pianos on people from a great height either, but I still enjoy classic Warner Brothers cartoons. Even in those cases, though, I’m always struck by the extent to which gruesome torment is at the core of the joke. Sometimes it’s in iconography that everyone kind of ignores — does anyone really think about why the devil is always depicted holding a pitchfork? it’s not a fun reason! — but sometimes it’s pretty deliberate. In this strip, I love that the slot machines themselves are fiery hot, leaving the poor damned players in agony as they pull the lever over and over again (and, presumably, never win). Do you think they’re kept in place by some mental block that makes them unable to leave the machine, perhaps mirroring a vice they were guilty of in life? Or are there just some chains or something at their feet that we can’t see, due to all the flames that are eternally burning their flesh?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/12/23

The bad news is that Sheriff Tait, the only law enforcement officer in the community of Hootin’ Holler, died from massive blood loss and organ damage after being mauled by a vicious bear. The good news is that this saved him from an even worse fate: dying slowly and terribly from the rabies that he contracted from a bat who bit him just moments before the bear caught up with him.