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Mary Worth, 6/24/22

Wow. Wow. You’re telling me that Jared has a friend? A non-Dawn friend named TJ? And TJ also likes to party down at “ROCK IT,” Santa Royale’s hottest club? I feel like Mary Worth is just teasing us here with all the narrative beats that we’ve been denied: Jared and his friend TJ hanging out and being almost certainly very annoying; the big reveal of what one of Jared’s friends would wear to the club; TJ spotting Dawn from across the crowded dance floor and recognition flashing in his eyes; and TJ telling Jared what he saw and Jared suddenly realizing that he could retrofit this into motivation for what he already wanted to do so he can keep his “nice guy” self-image intact. I can’t believe I’m begging for more details of a Jared storyline, but I need more details from this Jared storyline!

Funky Winkerbean, 6/24/22

What’s weirder here: That Funky Winkerbean will freely say “Amazon” in a strip but thinks that “Target” is as forbidden as “McDonald’s”? Or that Funky Winkerbean thinks that Target and Amazon are maybe the same thing?

Shoe, 6/24/22

The fact that the owner of Treetops’ only casual dining establishment feels comfortable admitting rampant health code violations to a reporter at Treetops’ only newspaper tells you everything you need to know about journalism in this town. (The fact that Treetops’ only casual dining establishment openly sells egg-based foods to its bird customers is another grim matter entirely.)

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Marvin, 6/23/22

Now, I’m not one of those fancy “body language experts” who get paid by Us Weekly to analyze paparazzi pics of Ansel Elgort or whoever, but I can tell you that by sitting there with their arms folded across their chest, these two old coots are telegraphing their anger and defensiveness. They presumably assumed this position unconsciously the moment they started discussing the Kids Today, and how they’d rather watch the new Star Wars show where Yoda is a woke baby on their laptop in their bedrooms instead of sitting next to their grandparents on the couch absorbing eighteen minutes of commercials for reverse mortgages during every episode of Blue Bloods on CBS. Then in panel two there’s a sudden left turn into a … piss joke? I think it’s a piss joke? He “streams” “commercials” in the bathroom? Maybe not a piss joke but it’s Marvin, you can see why I’m suspicious. Anyway, whatever’s going on there, despite mustache guy’s little smile you can tell they’re still mad about it.

Curtis, 6/23/22

Curtis, this is simply the ending of the influential 1987 graphic novel Watchmen, which spawned a popular film and television series. I’m not criticizing you for doing spoilers on a 35-year-old franchise, obviously, I’m just questioning what exactly it is we’re doing here.

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Gil Thorp, 6/22/22

As a certified coastal elitist, I usually take umbrage when someone says “Nobody cares about this outside your liberal bubble, poindexter,” but in this case, Gil is absolutely right: literally nobody cares about some years-ago plagiarism scandal from Gregg’s dad’s days writing for magazines, and in fact if you brought it up to most people, the most common response would be “What’s a magazine?” But Gil is also wrong about Gregg, whose main deal is that he’s going blind and has to wear a weird mask and occasionally pretend he has less control over his pitches than he actually does, which is … unusual, I guess, but certainly not special. I usually also take umbrage when someone says “Well, both sides are at fault, really,” but absolutely both these doofuses are incorrect in this conversation and I’m not afraid to say it.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/22/22

Speaking of being a coastal elitist, I’m always a little wary of declaring some phrase I encounter in the comics pages to be meaningless gibberish, because maybe it actually describes some well known cultural practice in “real America” that I’ve been too busy eating takeout Indian food and worshipping Satan to get hip to, and when it comes to things like a “unification display” I also have to keep in mind that, as someone in his middle age with no kids, I haven’t been to a big blow-out young person wedding in years, so who’s to say that “unification displays” aren’t a thing now? Well, a little Googling shows that they aren’t — the top hit for the phrase is a 2015 press release from the British Museum about four original Magna Carta manuscripts being displayed together for the first time, and it goes downhill from there — so this phrase actually belongs in same contemptible non-word zone as solo car date and vendo, except it has even less pizzaz. Anyway, ha ha, comic books! The characters in this strip simply cannot get enough of comic books, everybody! I’m not sure who the lady at the far right of this panel is, but it really tracks that even one-off characters who we’re never going to see again are willing to ooh and ahh over comic book-themed romantic gestures.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/22/22

Helga’s mother appears in this strip all the time so that the cast can perform tired mother-in-law jokes transposed to the Viking era, but I’m pretty sure we’ve never actually seen Hagar’s mother? Based on today’s strip, I’m guessing that Helga probably killed her, just like she’s about to kill Lute’s mother.