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Crock, 9/22/22

I know in my heart that this strip is 10-15 years old and started off with just “commercial” in the punchline but then at the last minute the writer realized “Wait, what are commercials on the internet called? Pop-up ads?” But I’d like to believe that the leader of the Lost Patrol here truly had a transcendent moment where his soul communed directly with the Divine, an experience he can only use imperfect human language to describe to his men. Was it like watching something on television, or maybe looking at something on the computer? Well, a little of both, but so much more. (Also, there was advertising.)

Blondie, 9/22/22

I make a lot of jokes on this blog along the lines of “Why does Dagwood hang out so much with Elmo, an 8-year-old child that he’s not related to?”, but the answer is pretty simple: there’s a lot of things he can only share with Elmo, things he can’t even talk to his wife about. Not sure why anyone would have a problem with that!

Funky Winkerbean, 9/22/22

OK, now I’m sorry I ever made fun of this strip for relenting on the darkness, please, it’s only Thursday, I don’t want to see this guy jerking off to those corpse pics in the Sunday strip, let’s ratchet back, let’s ratchet back

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Judge Parker, 9/21/22

Oh, sorry, it seems the Judge Parker brain trust has heard your little diatribes about how Judge Parker is boring now because it’s all about its characters processing their mundane emotions in baffling and erratic ways. Well, that’s why we’re abruptly shifting gears and bringing back Steve the wounded special forces warrior to introduce this hard-hitting new storyline about the judge that replaced Judge Randy Parker, who cracked down on meth and fentanyl traffic … and whose whole family just got murdered. Or, sorry, assassinated. Assassinated! Will I be cancelled as a soft-on-crime lib if I point out that assassination is a kind of murder?

Funky Winkerbean, 9/21/22

Speaking of murder, I guess the Funky Winkerbean brain trust noticed they hadn’t pulled any grim shit since Bull Bushka drove off a cliff back in 2019. Well, here you go, you ghouls: Darrin and Jessica tracked down a real weirdo who hoards memorabilia from the TV station that employed Jessica’s father, John Darling, including the gun that a guy dressed as a plant used to kill him! Look at how Jessica and her husband are recoiling in shock at the casual way this guy identifies his ghastly trophy! Are you happy now, you sickos? Are you happy???

Curtis, 9/21/22

I appreciate the long game Greg is playing here — making an elaborate show of enjoying Curtis’s favorite music before cruelly lowering the boom in the final panel. I assume, like a master chess player, he anticipated multiple potential third-panel conversational gambits from his son, and had a sick burn in his back pocket for all of them.

Shoe, 9/21/22

Far be it for me to call a comic strip about talking birds who wear (some) clothes “realistic,” but I do think that its portrayal of life at a small-town newspaper has a certain truth to it, in the sense that it depicts a publication run with almost no employees, which almost nobody reads, and the few remaining editors can just use it to pursue their own personal gripes and vendettas as they kill time waiting for a hedge fund to buy them and immediately shut them down.

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Marvin, 9/20/22

You know I am loath to say anything positive about the syndicated comic strip Marvin, but I have to say that I’m reasonably impressed that the strip is acknowledging that someone who is the parent of an infant and still in the early-to-mid stages of male pattern baldness is not, in fact, of an age to have attended Woodstock, or even Woodstock ’99, but rather would be one of those darn millennials we hear so much about on the news these days. By giving her husband’s exact age, Jenny really opens up a lot of information about his personality. Like, we’ve confirmed that, assuming we’re not dealing with some kind of Doogie Howser situation (and based on his demonstrate intellectual capabilities, I have zero reason to believe that we are), Jeff was in college at the earliest from 2005 to 2009, a full five years after “Who Let The Dogs Out” was released and a full four years and nine months after it had entirely worn out its welcome with literally everyone, meaning that he put it on that college mix CD as an ironic bit. He’s always been terrible, in other words, as further demonstrated by the fact that he’s now buying a turntable just so he can recreate that bit, which would’ve probably been only mildly annoying to the people in his dorm, for his family, who will absolutely hate him for it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/20/22

Think about the stuff that we actually see in Rex Morgan, M.D. Can you imagine how boring this dude’s “story” must’ve been to just be completely elided between today’s strip and yesterday’s? Dude’s been grievously insulted by the narrative structure he’s embedded within, and he’ll never even know it.

The Lockhorns, 9/20/22

God damn it, Leroy is an obsessive Jets fan, not a Giant’s fan. Do I have to be the unpaid keeper of the lore for all of these strips now???