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Gearhead Gertie, 7/18/24

Frank Sinatra died in a hospital with his wife by his side, which, when it comes to ways to die, is not the worst by any means. But consider: what if instead he had died onstage because he sang a song that was far too dangerous and lost control of it, while thousands of his fans looked on, horrified but deep down inside thrilled, because isn’t the possibility of death, no matter how slim, just the far edge of the same space of drama that brought them there in the first place? Obviously that’s not what pulls in concertgoers, that’s not really what live music is about, but also that’s why Gertie is still robust and full of energy, feeding on the visceral noise and violence and risk of NASCAR, and her husband is a pencil neck listening to his little records, a man whose requests to fly a giant Sinatra flag out front once in a while have been repeatedly nixed.

Family Circus, 7/18/24

Look, you can try to prevent your children from learning anything about sex and reproduction all you want, but eventually, in the absence of information, they will try figuring out how it all works on their own from whatever they can glean from their environment, and the results will honestly be much more disturbing than you can imagine.

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Mark Trail, 7/17/24

Wow, it seems the Grungey Boys’ whole deal was a real “I learned it from watching you” situation, because it started when Ranger Shaw dumped a box of Twilight DVDs in the woods, and then Robbie saw him do it, and then [chain of events I forget the details of and don’t feel like looking up] breaking up fax machines with baseball bats in a National Park. Anyway, I’m pretty hung up on that box of DVDs. I feel like it’s way too large for a scenario where you just own the entire Twilight saga on DVD, but way too small if your goal was to amass so many copies of movies from the Twilight saga on DVD that your husband wouldn’t be able to dispose of all of them in the woods. Also, while I’m not a fan of Twilight’s whole deal, I do think this act of marital warfare is over the line and also counterproductive — it will simply lead to Ranger Shaw’s wife repeatedly paying $3.99 to rent the movies VOD via iTunes or Amazon Prime, further enriching Stephenie Meyer and the films’ producers with each purchase.

Judge Parker, 7/17/24

Oh, good, Sophie in fact did her due diligence on the whole “Is my dad dead or not?” question. Unfortunately, she must now contend with the “Am I in the grips of an acute form of gothic madness or not?” question, which is the sort of thing guaranteed to ruin any beach vacation.

Pluggers, 7/17/24

Pluggers are simply covered with oozing sores and open wounds. And not little ones, either!

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Judge Parker, 7/16/24

Sorry to sound like, you know, a worrywart, but I think that if I had glimpsed what looked very much like my dead father wrapped in chains under water, I might … not spend my time relaying that information to my friend as if it were a mildly interesting dream I had? I dunno, I might call home at that point. “Abbey!” I’d say, if I were her. “What’s Sam up to? Seen him lately? I don’t suppose he’s working on any cases where he might get murdered and his corpse dropped into the Long Island Sound? You’d probably know something about that, if that were going on, right?” That’s what I’d do. I don’t want to tell Sophie how to live her life. But it just seems like maybe it’d head off some misunderstandings.

Mary Worth, 7/16/24

I very much love the symbolism of the second panel here. “Dear, I know engaging with your mother is emotionally painful,” Mary is saying, “but I urge you to grasp onto that thorny relationship with your bare hands, no matter how much it leads you to suffer! Me? I’m wearing gloves. I have no stake in any of this and it won’t affect me at all.”

The Phantom, 7/16/24

Hey, remember the rocket that fake Elon Musk launched a few weeks ago? Well, it crashed in Bangalla, and this cute robot rover guy was in it, and now he’s wandering around the Bangallan jungle. Don’t have much to say about it but I thought you’d like to see him. I just think he’s neat!