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Mark Trail, 7/9/22

Hey everybody, remember Sassy? He was Rusty’s adorable little puppy (distinct from Andy, Mark’s big macho dog), and he was always prone to getting into trouble, just like Rusty! He sort of faded away in the past few years of the strip but now he’s back! … just in time to die horribly from whatever gross skin disease is afflicting Lost Forest. RIP Sassy, 1981-2022, you will probably not be missed.

The Phantom, 7/9/22

Man, I’m barely even going to try to explain the current Phantom plot, which has been very, very long and difficult to follow but is mostly a series of nesting narratives from Old Man Mozz explaining how the Phantom will ruin his life if he tries to bust his former flirtation partner Savarna out of prison, and it’s never quite clear if we’re watching the big guy actually doing this stuff or just hearing Mozz spin a what-if narrative about it, but the point is that you can apparently show a couple guys just straight-up dying from taking a bullet to the chest, right here in the funny papers! It’s Saturday, I guess? You can show dudes getting shot to death, on the weekend? And maybe if it’s just a story-within-a-story told by a wise old sage and not something really happening in the strip? Do the practices and standards departments at major newspaper comics syndicates take into consideration the layer of narrative distance at which a violent murder happens?

Mary Worth, 7/9/22

“I mean, I’m definitely going to have a lot of different opportunities to explore once the state Physician Assistant Board finds out about our extremely inappropriate relationship and I get my license taken away!”

Slylock Fox, 7/9/22

Welp, let’s take a look at the details here and see if we can guess the six diffOH MY GOD, is that a human femur, is that GRANDMA’s femur, oh my GOD

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Here’s your comment of the week. Hopefully you like it, because this is what peak performance looks like.

“‘I was thinking we could take a trip to New York City over the holiday weekend.’ ‘That’s a nice idea, Leroy! Wait, you’re not just setting up an elaborate punchline at my expense, are you?’” –digamma

And here are your hilarious runners up!

“Looks like someone finally got my letters demanding Slylock ‘show scalp.’” –Windier E. Megatons, on Twitter

“I also like that there’s no ladder or steps on the lifeguard chair, so you can imagine Leroy awkwardly climbing the side.” –rrh

“My head canon is that Dustin’s dismembered body is inside that recycling bin.” –Joe Blevins

“I’m sorry, but you lost me. None of this makes any sense. I just asked you why you mistrust me, and you feed me something that sounds like a cross between Bugs Bunny and David Lynch that I cannot recall at all. I don’t even buy that I named my daughter Moon Maid, of all things.” –made of wince

“A middle-aged incel, a pompous pseudo-intellectual and his much-younger trophy wife, a hen-pecked boyfriend and the manipulative, victim blaming shrew who’s got her claws in him — Quintessential. Moving in its simplicity, American as apple pie. June Brigman is truly the Norman Rockwell of current America. Beautiful!” –Dunkelcopter

“Uncooked hotdogs in buns and frosting-slathered cake with no utensils? Mary, you shouldn’t have! No, seriously, this is a terrible and disgusting thing you have done!” –jroggs

“A scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s 10-minute student film, To Catch A Moron.” –But What Do I know

“I have no idea what ‘Gregg gets rocked’ means, but I choose to believe it means he pitched so badly that they pelted him with rocks and garbage.” –Peanut Gallery

“‘Oh, absolutely you should have come here,’ Rex recites, directing a knowing glance at the audience. Taking only a moment to shift his pose from his patient-pointing hand to his audience-pointing hand, he continues with his PSA. ‘Where are you looking, Doc?’” the patient inquires.” –Austria

“Jess unfortunately has a long history of abuse to process, starting with her parents giving her and her sister rhyming names.” –TheDiva

“Why is it that the birds in this strip have eye whites but the people don’t? This is truly the land that God forgot, or just got bored of, more likely.” –pugfuggly

“Considering how protective Abba is of their copyright, I bet the dad in Dustin could have the whole call center wiped out just by forwarding the number to the band’s lawyers. Real power move for any spite-driven boomer type.” –Inanimate Carbon Ron, on Twitter

“[Later, back at the Hamm house] Gregg’s Dad: ‘Good news everyone! We don’t have to hide anymore!’
[Goes out side and pries the second ‘m’ off of the ‘Hamm’ sign on the mailbox]” –Kevin On Earth

“A paunchy, middle-aged journalist who has inexplicably survived wave after wave of layoffs and consolidation in regional television confers with another middle-aged writer who has no idea that literally no one cares what writers do. That’s it, that’s the joke. Ain’t that zany enough for you?” –pastordan

“The thumbs up on the poster is an unironically good touch. That’s right, Dagwood; non-union Batman heard the whole conversation.” –Dan

“I know that Dagwood’s peculiar … let us say, ‘anatomy’ … has been mentioned on this blog before, but just what in the sweet holy fuck is up with this posture? He is a) leaning back on an invisible Barcalounger while b) holding his arm at a 90-degree angle as though he’s the doyenne of country club life balancing his purse on his elbow and c) shuffling along, Groucho-Marx-like, with his knees caving in on each other. No wonder Blondie has his arm in a death-grip; she has to physically yank him along before he falls the hell over in an unholy tangle of limbs and sciatica.” –els

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Crankshaft, 7/8/22

Look, obviously this blog is about 15% by volume me slamming on Funkyverse strips, so I’m just going to get ahead of things here and say that today’s strip is very, very funny, and the time-reverse gimmick is a good one that makes it funnier. Was it worthwhile spending 35 years writing the comic strip Crankshaft in such a way that we all hate him enough to get a genuine belly laugh watching him flee in terror from angry bees? Probably not, but in this moment, I appreciate it.

Blondie, 7/8/22

It’s extremely not new to remark on how much modern filmmaking is dominated by superhero franchises, but that doesn’t mean the syndicated newspaper comic strip Blondie can’t bring anything new to the table. In this case, it’s “late-middle-aged-and-older dudes find superheroes sexually threatening,” which I have to admit is new to me at least.

Dick Tracy, 7/8/22

Oh, right, I had forgotten that the Moon People in Dick Tracy had to leave the Moon for some reason and relocate to an undisclosed location (that turns out to be Antarctica) and Dick pretended to care about his family so he could sniff out the answer to this puzzle, because he’s the world’s greatest detective and also an asshole. I was going to do a joke about him conquering Moon Valley, but he’s a cop, annexing territory isn’t really his bag. I guess he could arrest everyone for violating the Antarctic Treaty System, but enforcing international law isn’t really his bag either.

Family Circus, 7/8/22

Gotta respect the thought process here, which was apparently, “Sure, we establish in dialogue that he’s still drinking his soda, but comics are a visual medium, we need to show that with a big disgusting blob of spit coming out of his mouth. Those grandmas who cut the panel out to hang on their fridge might not like it, but this one’s just for me.”