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Slylock Fox, 2/21/23

So I guess these nightmare-bugs are supposed to be … termites? Or some other horrible bug that feasts on wood, but I’m not going to bother researching what that might be because I’d probably end up seeing actual photographs of these nightmares, which is definitely not something I’m up for. My point, though, is that clearly whatever sinister process granted sapience to the animals of the Slylockverse did so to even the very tiny and very gross among them. The question that today’s strip raises is whether these bugs, as part of their transformation, achieved human-scale proportions in defiance of the square-cube law, or if they remained tiny but their chefs carve bits of wood into miniature replicas of full-sized logs, as part of a elaborate culinary culture that we’re just getting a glimpse of here.

Pluggers, 2/21/23

Pluggers is, of course, a fundamentally sad text, a ongoing and often quite grim paean to a supposedly bygone set of mores. Today, however, may be the first panel I can remember in which the practice being held up as an object of nostalgic longing is just obviously, demonstrably worse than what we have now. “Oh, can you kids today block that creepy guy you work with on Instagram so he doesn’t post borderline sexual comments on every one of your selfies, and also complain to HR about him? In my day, if I didn’t want to know he was jerking off, I would have to just leave my phone off the hook so that he couldn’t call me and nobody could either, and also quit my job!”

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Mary Worth, 2/20/23

This upcoming court battle is going to settle an important precedent: can legal action be taken against someone for stuff they do in your hallucinations and dreams? Normally this would seem to be a slam dunk to get thrown out of court immediately, but I can see a judge learning about Wilbur’s whole deal and gruffly saying “I’ll allow it,” then saying the same thing when the jury somehow imposes the death penalty.

Beetle Bailey, 2/20/23

Wordle was made public in October 2021, and went viral a couple months later when the ability to turn your results into an emoji grid was added. In other words, Beetle Bailey has name-checked a popular culture thing a mere 14 months after it entered popular culture, which is really shocking for a strip that only started depicting the Army as racially integrated in 1970.

Gil Thorp, 2/20/23

“Kaz leaving was a gut punch for me. Devastating. Something I’ll never get over. My best friend, gone, leaving a hole that can never be filled. Oh, wait, you’re asking about the team? They don’t really give a shit. They’re teenagers! I honestly don’t think they can tell most adults apart.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/20/23

Can you imagine if a guy you’d been seeing casually announced that he’s moving to be closer to you, but then mentions that he’s also doing it to be closer to Buck Wise? That’d be a real emotional roller coaster, and one that by rights ought to end either with a breakup or a written agreement that you never have to be in a room with Buck for more than ten minutes at a time.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/19/23

You probably don’t remember (because why would you, remembering inane Rex Morgan plots for you is my job, literally), but way back in early 2020, roots country legend Truck Tyler caught some kind of persistent respiratory virus before it was cool, and was also sleeping in his car, so Buck arranged for a free room in a depressing, half-empty motel to serve as a makeshift isolation ward, which Truck used as inspiration for a new song that became a viral hit on, let’s say … TikTok? … which I assume means that lots of teens are now LARPing as depressed old roots country singers down at the Glenwood Motel these days. Truck still has a standing offer of a free room there are a result, in case this nice diner waitress wants to have sex in the most depressing place she’s ever had sex in her life.

Family Circus, 2/19/23

I can think of few acts more humiliating than calling your wife from inside your car to have her stop your children from throwing snowballs at you. Yet Big Daddy Keane has no shame about it! Look at him grinning smugly in panel three here. “This is a great use case of a cellular telephone!” he’s thinking to himself. The man deserves what he’s about to get.

Mary Worth, 2/19/23

Oh hey by the way Estelle is being tormented by visions of Wilbur in animal form while she tries to sleep, if you were wondering! Will murdering him finally make the nightmare images go away? Probably not, but I for one am willing for her to take that chance.