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Blondie, 1/25/22

OK, a cat wedding isn’t that wacky — like maybe it’s in the top 20 percent of wacky things that might conceivably happen to a caterer — but this strip did make me realize that frankly nothing particularly wacky ever happens to Dagwood. Like, he goes to work, annoys his carpool, gets yelled at by his boss, eats fast food, etc., etc. Oh, did you go to a bird store and the bird store guy said something weird about the bird, Dagwood? BORING. What I’m trying to say is that he should know better than now to try to one-up his wife on this point.

Dick Tracy, 1/25/22

It must be kind of fun to be Kriptonite — no, wait, I mean Kyptonite — sorry, that’s just Kryptonite, I guess. Anyway, it must be fun to be him because you don’t have to keep track of the various inscrutable feuds within the Tracyverse underworld. Someone calls you up, pays you some money, and then you go and murder someone else with a speargun! Is the guy you’re supposed to murder today the same guy who paid you to murder someone else like two weeks ago? Who knows! You don’t keep written records of all this stuff! It’s murder! Why would you?

Mary Worth, 1/25/22

ME, ON A DATE, REALIZING THAT THE DEAD DOG TALK ISN’T GOING SO WELL: I’m really enjoying working with my nephew! The job stresses him out, though. Probably because of all the dogs we keep killing [no damn it shut up shut up shut up]

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Mary Worth, 1/24/23

You might remember that a bit over a year ago, Estelle, owner of two pets — a cat who defeated Wilbur in a piss fight and a dog that Wilbur had to give to her because the dog didn’t like him — went on a fateful date with her vet during one of the off-again lulls in her on-again, off-again relationship with Wilbur, and that date was the night of the fateful karaoke battle that she and Wilbur waged against one another. Ed the vet left immediately, obviously, and they hadn’t spoken since, but last week she decided to take her pets back to him for a checkup, and I guess hoped that he wouldn’t mention it? But he did mention it, and they had a good laugh and decided to do another date, which I didn’t discuss here because it was all pretty boring.

Today, thought … today has potential. There’s one thing any person absolutely loves on a date, and its when their date arrives late, sits down directly next to you, and says “Sorry about the wait, but I was up to my elbows in dead pomeranian like 15 minutes ago. Wasn’t my fault, honest, thought it’s not like you or the pomeranian’s owners could tell if it was, ha ha!” Anyway, after Wilbur and Arthur Z, Dr. Ed should have a very low bar to clear in terms of Estelle romantic partner quality, so I’m excited to see how it botches it.

Dick Tracy, 1/24/23

It’d be pretty wild if this Dick Tracy storyline ends with the criminals all killing each other before Dick even has a chance to! Maybe one day these guys will learn that it’s better for everyone concerned if contracts are enforced by a state apparatus with an elaborate system of civil law and, ultimately, a monopoly on legitimate violence, rather than just the fickle promises of other criminals.

Pluggers, 1/24/23

Sure, you laugh, but this is actually a great screening and diagnostic technique. If you come back and the patient is angry-crying about how they’ve pissed themselves waiting for you, you know you should schedule them for an appointment right a way, whereas if they’re just annoyed you can fit them in next month sometime.

Shoe, 1/24/23

“Wait, aren’t you like eleven years old? That frankly makes even less sense.”

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Gil Thorp, 1/23/23

Maybe I’m going to get pushback for this by people who are and/or know actual teens, but my take on vaping, setting aside for the moment its purpose as a drug delivery system, is that it’s one of the dorkiest things I encounter in the real world on a regular basis. You’re sucking cotton-candy flavored mist out of an object that looks either like a tiny alto saxophone or something that would’ve been called a “deathstick” in a bad late ’90s cyberpunk movie. Not that a teen should take lessons on being cool from me, a 48-year-old man who blogs about comic strips, but it’s just sad that the Magic the Gathering nerds have internalized that vaping is too cool for them. To be fair, Nick refuses to buy into this dichotomy either, and is happy to share his cool guy vaping bounty with them. Nick seems like an all right dude, to be honest, maintaining his generosity despite the nerds’ rudeness!

Slylock Fox, 1/23/23

For some reason I assumed that the answer to “which way” was going to be a cardinal direction and I was about to pen a screed about how the liberal coastal elitists at Slylock Fox have constructed a mystery where you have to know about the relative locations of the zoo and lake in Central Park. But it turns out the answer relies on knowing which side of the bus the doors are on, and as a transit nerd I’m down with this one.

Honestly, the biggest story here is not Harry Ape robbing yet another bank, but the continued existence of a zoo in a post-animalpocalypse world. I suppose the animals could maintain it with empty cages and habitats as a monument to their former enslavement, but there are other possibilities, and they’re all much darker.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/23/23

You know, for someone who’s dirt poor and also doesn’t really seem to care about living a healthy lifestyle, Snuffy sure visits the doctor a lot! And it occurred to me, looking at this strip, that we often see him in that situation with his shirt off and the top half of his overalls unbuckled, which (a) indicates that a decent amount of thought went into the question of “Given how Snuffy canonically dresses, what would it look like if he had to disrobe?” and (b) is really a blessing, considering how much further they could’ve gone with it.