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By Friday someone had better either be terminally ill or so healthy they have superpowers

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/15/22

Ah, good news, everybody! It looks like Andrzej and Tildy may have had some health scares, but they’re on the mend and all this drama has brought them closer together. It’s a perfect ending to the week as we look forward to seeing what new story begins on Monday, and [looks at calendar]. Oh. Um. Well, I hope everyone is excited to see two old people sitting quietly and watching the the 1930 Cooper/Dietrich film Morocco in a hospital room for the next six days!

Gil Thorp, 8/15/22

I’ve made many, many jokes over the years about how the Thorps’ kids have been memory holed. The strip’s new writer is bringing them back, though, and in their very first appearance is letting us know why they’ve been gone so long: they suck. A bratty teen and a little tattletale! Who’d want a get a Christmas card with pictures of these losers on it? Certainly not me!

Blondie, 8/15/22

A thing about this strip that makes me sad is that in the third panel you can just see that the gas station where the Bumsteads are filling up is called “Gooney Gas.” That’s a solid goofy Blondie business name and it deserves better than to be crammed in between two word balloons in such small type that it’s probably illegible in newspapers. Is there a Gooney Gas mascot? A bizarre slogan on par with “Say — then pay!”? America demands a full exploration of this intriguing corner of the Blondieverse!

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The Metawilburphis

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Mary Worth, 8/14/22

Behold DaWnilbur, everyone! I love the way this matches up with realistic dream logic in that Dawn was spending hours before falling asleep saying “It’s like I’m turning into my father!” but once in the dreamscape she’s totally unsuspecting and when her hair starts falling out she doesn’t immediately grasp the metaphor, but just looks at it quizzically as the Transformation gets underway. Anyway, I truly enjoy the next-to-last panel here, in which we learn that even fully Wilburized, Dawn will still have pretty, pretty eyes.

Dick Tracy, 8/14/22

It’s never been entirely clear what form of energy the Lunarians harness/generate with their antennae, but I guess we now know that it definitely raises temperature, right? Like if poor Marina had been torn apart by, like, magnetism or antigravity or something, her killers wouldn’t be staring at the carnage in icy disdain making a cruel remark about how it all smelled, the way they would about charred flesh? Or maybe they would. I don’t know what it smells like when someone is killed horribly by space aliens, I live my life correctly, thank you very much.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/14/22

Here’s a strip where the throwaway panels at the beginning make the whole thing profoundly sad. Like, Jughaid was explicitly invited to join a band, and but then sometime afterwards either left or was forced out and is now trying and failing to make it as a solo act. What emotionally fraught Fleetwood Mac-level band drama are we not being shown here?

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I enjoy “confronting my ‘ambassador’” myself, if you know what I mean

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The Lockhorns, 8/13/22

The thing about the Lockhorns is that, while in one sense they’re millennials, in another sense they’re trapped in an eternal present in which they never age but their hateful marriage extends indefinitely into infinity, and so they’re always having to upgrade their mutual loathing into ever more baroque forms. It’s no longer enough for Leroy to just look at Loretta’s cooking and say something cutting with dead eyes; now he has to come up with some pretext to drag her to the tent section at REI and say “Look! No kitchen! Wouldn’t it be great to live here? To forage for mushrooms and berries, maybe trap small game, like our primitive ancestors did? Agriculture was a mistake, Loretta, a mistake, because it gave rise to cooking, which led to your cooking in particular. I’d rather get parasites from eating raw rabbit, Loretta! I really would!”

Dick Tracy, 8/13/22

Wow, this Lunarian supremicist faction within the Antarctic Lunarian colony really knows how to put on a show! Remember, having having a guy on stage ranting about seizing power and starting genocidal wars may have worked for Hitler, but in this day and age, people want to feel more connected to their despots. That’s why you want to have plants in the audience asking the questions whose answers reveal the true evil of your plans, making your bloodthirsty diatribe feel more like a bloodthirsty conversation among friends.

Pluggers, 8/13/22

Well, if you’re in Iowa, it’s probably a dizzy spell? Maybe go see a doctor, sir! A doctor can diagnose this better than a syndicated newspaper comic strip that illustrates reader jokes with folksy furries can, trust me on this!