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One-panel Wednesday

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Dennis the menace, 6/29/22

There are so many questions this panel raises — like where are any of these people and why is Henry wearing a suit jacket in the same … room? area? zone? … where a guy is lifting weights and is Dennis talking about his dad’s heart or his esophageal sphincter or what — but the one that truly pushes me over the edge is that Dennis is standing on what appears to be an ottoman. And why? The answer appears to be “so the various bits of clip art can all be in the frame together” but there’s already no real sense of where any of these people are in physical space so that seems wildly unnecessary. Just move Henry up a few inches. Or down! It doesn’t matter! Nothing matters!

Pluggers, 6/29/22

You know what does matter, though? Working so that America’s infrastructure becomes ADA compliant as our population ages unstoppably into pluggerdom. It’s good for pluggers and frankly good for all of us if physical mobility becomes easier. No notes on this one!

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Romance is complex

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Mary Worth, 6/28/22

Has there ever, going all the way back to the ancient Egyptians, been a more perfect match between visual and narrative art as today’s Mary Worth? I’ve studied the subject and feel confident in saying that no, there hasn’t. The image of Dawn loping away from Jared in panel two is absolutely perfect, and the way her legs and arms are positioned lets you know exactly how mismatched her defiant words and her absurd running style must be as Jared watches her flee. Her muted bluish color palette and slip-on shoes somehow just add to her humiliation, for me. But then, how can things get more humiliating for you than having Jared of all people yell “We were friends before … we can be friends again!” at you in a public place where other people can hear it? Well, it’s only Tuesday, so there’s a pretty good chance we’re going to find out.

Sally Forth, 6/28/22

I regret to inform you that Sally and Ted never did get to swing with their hot new neighbor, because it turns out he was just buying the house next door to rent out to people who presumably don’t want anything to do with the Forths either erotically or socially. However, that doesn’t mean Ted won’t get to be sexually humiliated this summer, although finding out that your widowed mother has a new zaddy boyfriend with Celtic tattoos activates a very different kind of kink.

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Can we get a week of Max trying and failing to do sweet skateboard tricks

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Gil Thorp, 6/27/22

It’s that time of year again: the time when the baseball season plot keeps rolling ahead in Gil Thorp and you look at the calendar and think “Uh, hey, isn’t school over for the year … pretty much everywhere in the country? Shouldn’t some of these kids have graduated by now?” Instead, we have at least a week left until we get the possibility of a wacky summer storyline, and I guess we need that week to get Marty Moon involved in this somehow. He’s been MIA for months, but now that a questionable Coach Thorp coaching decision has resulted in a media circus (read: one guy with a camera), Marty’s hoping to cash in on that (read: he’s hoping whoever’s filming this will record some b-roll of him doing play-by-play inside his wooden crate that he can use on the page for the GoFundMe campaign he’s launching to buy a bigger crate).

Slylock Fox, 6/27/22

The old Hayes Code had strict rules about depicting criminals as enjoying the fruits of their ill deeds, and today’s Slylock Fox really shows why. Look at Shady Shrew! Who wouldn’t want to live this lifestyle: just chilling out, cooling off your feet in a swift-moving river that appears to be not terribly polluted despite being only a few feet from a major thoroughfare, enjoying a book, an ice-cold soda pop, and a couple of (ALLEGEDLY) stolen chocolate bars. This is what being “shady” gets you, and yet being an upstanding citizen and grocery clerk just results in you being stone cold furious all day. I know which option I’d pick!