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Crankshaft, 12/14/22

I love the idea of this TV station boss threatening to make his staff pick up dog shit if they annoy him. There are just lots of levels to it. First of all, there’s the fact that they have a regular event where a bunch of dogs shit all over the studio, and they haven’t really figured out how to deal with that yet. Also, if nobody makes this pun, I guess the dog turds are just going to stay all over the studio? To prove a point? “At least nobody made a stupid pun,” the boss says, as everyone gingerly walks around all the poop that’s smeared everywhere. Anyway, I certainly hope that the station janitor is within earshot, so that he knows that his job is a punishment, actually.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/14/22

I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the gag writers for Barney Google and Snuffy Smith understand what “feudin’” entails in a culture where clan loyalties are paramount and the government is unable to claim a monopoly on legitimate violence. It does not involve playing wacky pranks on one another, I assure you! It involves Barlow trying to murder Uriah, with a gun.

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Curtis, 12/13/22

Part of the whole comedic engine that makes Curtis work is that Greg Wilkins is kind of a square. Still, I hadn’t guessed just how much he eschewed the modern world’s loose morals — and how much he secretly yearned to emulate them — until today. “Dare I?” he thinks. “Dare I take off not just my shoes, but my socks — and not in the shower or under the covers at night, but in out in the open in the living room, where anyone who lives here can see my bare feet? I mean, why not? If I have to look at naked toes every day thanks to the out-of-control liberal media, plus all those foot fetish websites I keep accidentally ending up on when I do innocent Google searches like ‘is it legal to go barefoot’ and ‘punishment for barefoot in public’ and ‘big toed nymphos can’t stop foot-fucking,’ then who am I to cling to the old ways?”

Hi and Lois, 12/13/22

As you should know by now, my favorite kind of Hi and Lois strip is the kind where we see just how dark the Thurstons’ lives are, and today’s really pays off in that department, with Thirsty sitting in his patched chair in front of his computer where he’s watching the game on some janky illegal stream from Slovenia that’s downloading malware right now, maybe because he failed to pay his cable bill, maybe because he’s in a fight with Irma and they’ve divided the house in half with masking tape, I Love Lucy-style, and she’s claimed the living room. Either way, I assume that “My football team is having a losing season” is code for “I’ve lost a ton of money betting on the NFL this year,” and his depressed slouch tells me he was in for a lot on Portugal over Morocco too.

Mary Worth, 12/13/22

I know we’ve all been trying to figure out what exactly Zak’s deal is over the course of this storyline, but I really do think we need to apply Occam’s Razor and accept the simplest answer, which is that Zak is just kind of dumb.

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Mary Worth, 12/12/22

Good morning and happy Monday, everybody! Definitely what we all wanted after putting a relaxing weekend behind us to log in and see this:

Look, there’s been a lot of buzz about AI programs that can generate art from prompts lately, but I’m pretty sure none of them could take “show the weird fake-happy-but-actually-enraged face your old-enough-to-be-your-mother babysitter would make at you to mock you for the infantile games you played at dinner with your former babysitter, who looks just like her” and come up with … this:

That’s the human touch, baby! That’s the level of passive aggression only Mary Worth and its carbon-based creative team can deliver, which why I’m proud to keep you up to date on it. Ha ha, look at how chill Zak is in panel two! This is all just a normal part of the world, to him!

Funky Winkerbean, 12/12/22

I’m sorry, did you find the big “actually, everything weird that’s happened in this strip for the past ten years is due to time travel” reveal to be disappointing? Well, you’ll be happy to hear we’re shifting to an “it was all a dream” ending, something that has never disappointed anyone ever.

Gasoline Alley, 12/12/22

I love that Walt’s big garbage truck ride was part of his “bucket list” — that is, the things he wanted to do before he died — but he assures Mayor Melba that he’ll treasure the memory “forever.” Because that’s how long he’ll be alive! He’ll keep aging and aging but never know the sweet release of death! Sorry, Mayor Melba, you’re just a walk-on player in somebody else’s hell.