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Mary Worth, 10/7/22

Ladies! You want to know what it takes to get a man to “put a ring [not pictured] on it”? Well, apparently you just have to cook the same simple meal that his teenage babysitter made for him years ago when he was a sad neglected child. It’s a real monkey’s paw situation, in that you get what you want but also get a very clear picture of what role exactly you play in your man’s emotional life. Anyway, I’m guessing Iris is going to put off this proposal until she can track down Nancy the babysitter and defeat her in single combat.

Gil Thorp, 10/7/22

There have been plenty of Gil Thorpian shakeups this year, but we haven’t had a chance yet to assess how they’ve affected Gil’s coaching, which is, despite appearances, what he’s actually paid to do. Well, it appears that Gil strolled into the locker room on day one of football practice and announced “If I were on offense, I would simply advance the ball more than 10 yards per set of downs, and ultimately either carry or pass it into the end zone.” And thus “the Thorp Special” was born! Looks like Goshen hasn’t figured out how to stop it yet!

Mark Trail, 10/7/22

I haven’t been super engaged in the current Mark Trail plot about a roadsider tiger “sanctuary”/cult, and, frankly, it looks like Mark hasn’t been either, and now he’s got a better offer. Wouldn’t it be great if comics characters could just peace out of stories and jump into new ones at a whim? Why not! It’s the ’20s, we’re all Zoomers with ADHD now, let’s just go with the flow, baby!

The Lockhorns, 10/7/22

“What did you serve this on … a man bun? A bun made out of man? Did you get that To Serve Man alien cookbook from that Twilight Zone episode, and use its recipes for ‘man bun’ as a guide for baking buns out of human flesh? Did you kill a bunch of men in order to cook them and feed them to me? Is our kitchen a crime scene? Are there more victims than I could possibly imagine?”

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Judge Parker, 10/6/22

Oh, were you excited about Sam’s old partner Steve making a triumphant return to the strip? Well, too bad, it’s been less than three weeks since he showed up and he’s already been brutally murdered by the crooked cops or the meth gangs or the crooked cops and the meth gangs working together, who can say. At least this means that Gloria, who was a very longtime beloved character in the strip until she quit her job as Sam’s secretary to skip town with Steve, might need to come crawling back to Sam for a job now that she’s tragically widowed! She’ll probably spend all her time being dramatically sad, which fits in with the current vibe of the strip, and also with the fact that Sam won’t be able to pay her very much.

Dick Tracy, 10/6/22

If you needed a single strip to explain current vibe of modern-day Dick Tracy, you can do worse than this one, in which a typical Tracy-style mutant gangster gets enlisted in a scheme to help his nephew land a part in a stage play about old-timey comic strips.

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Slylock Fox, 10/5/22

I’m very tickled by the fact that a mystery comic strip for kids (it’s right there in the title! Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids! surely many kids are reading the daily paper for its furry-based mystery content, right?) would have a question that includes the word “monogamous” in it. I feel like this is going to lead to a certain amount of vocabulary questioning that in most cases will go fine but might give rise to a few children awkwardly learning that their parents are swingers. Anyway, you know who isn’t monogamous? This octopus! Look at her gathering up all these engagement rings, as she plans to propose to each and every member of her polycule.

The Phantom, 10/5/22

Look, I understand that as this nation’s foremost comics blogger I carry a host of obligations to you, my readers, and one of those is letting you know when the flaming skeleton appears in The Phantom. Well, there he is! I’m under no obligation to explain to you what the hell is going on, so just enjoy the out of context skeleton, slowly skeleton-walking his way to through the jungle, presumably to interact with one of the other characters, eventually.

Pluggers, 10/5/22

Wow, that freezer sure is packed full with identical boxes! I guess it doesn’t take much to make a plugger happy, but it sure takes a lot of it.