The Comics Curmudgeon

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Friday is (mostly) for children

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Family Circus, 9/10/21

A lot has changed for me, both in my life and vis-à-vis my relationship to the comics, since I started this blog in 2004, and definitely the one change I would’ve been least likelty to predict is that I would come to have an occasional grudging admiration for the Family Circus. And I didn’t even have to become a parent for it to happen! Yes, the strip is like 75% darnedest-thing-saying and reused art by volume, but every once in a while you get a great image like today’s, when Daddy has very clearly just had the epiphany that he could be doing literally anything else right now.

Curtis, 9/10/21

Curtis is doing a thing this week where our title character confronts rival mobs of pro- and anti-mask parents in front of his school and I have literally no interest in engaging with it, but I do want to say that “Look, everyone, a child wearing his hat backwards wanting to speak!” is definitely the funniest thing I’ve read this week.

Mark Trail, 9/10/21

A lot has changed for Mark Trail over the years, too, but I’m happy to report that there is one constant in the Trailian multiverse and that is that Mark is absolutely ripped.

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Soapy Thursday

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Gil Thorp, 9/9/21

Big news, everybody! Usually football dominates the Gil Thorp fall storyline, just like it dominates the American sports fan’s mind, but this year we’re going to acknowledge that there are other sports happening in the fall as well, sports like volleyball and gymnastics, and that girls play them too! So far the main point of this plot seems to be “if you play two sports the same semester, you don’t have much time for a social life,” but the last time we did a gymnastics plot in this strip, it ended with racists getting beat up so I’m willing to see where this goes.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/9/21

Speaking of being willing to see where something goes: A mysterious figure from Jordan’s possibly retconned past has showed up, tempting him with a big payday to go on one last mission. Good news, though: Jordan’s not going to do it. No hard feelings, says Griff, as he leaves the strip forever! Whew, that was almost interesting there for a minute.

Dick Tracy, 9/9/21

OK, fine, I’ll stop ranting about time travel stuff in Dick Tracy and talk about something else. Like, in today’s strip, isn’t it kind of weird that we appear to have skipped over exactly one sentence of dialogue between panels one and two, and it’s a sentence that Dick himself needlessly summarizes? I guess it’s structured this way so that the dialogue alternates between Dick and Chief Patton. Or, maybe Diet’s time-viewing experiments have started interfering with the very nature of reality, causing temporal discontinuities in everyday l[I am felled by a single sniper’s bullet to the head]

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Excited for Halftrack’s collaboration with Mr. Brainwash

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Dennis the Menace, 9/8/21

We all know, of course, that every time the Henry and Alice Mitchell attempt to make friends, their very first social engagement ends in disaster when Dennis says the darndest/most insulting thing in front of them. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, on the other hand, don’t have any friends, which I’ve always assumed is the reason why they allow Dennis to come over to their house all the time, because the irritation he causes Mr. Wilson is a welcome distraction from the irritation they cause one another. Anyway, George has apparently browbeat some acquaintance, maybe just some guy he played chess with in the park once, into coming over to his house, and Martha has been nice enough to prepare some coffee, but here comes Dennis to ruin everything, just like he does with his parents. I’m beginning to suspect that he acts out just so that he can be center of attention at all times and nobody makes non-menacing acquaintances????

Beetle Bailey, 9/8/12

Sadly, it’s not a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for a general officer to attempt to “build buzz” to create a cult of personality around himself and/or “go viral.” A real oversight, in my opinion!

Dick Tracy, 9/8/12

“Stealing the Time Drone won’t be easy. Dick Tracy’s a close friend of Diet Smith. He always shows up when Smith’s tech is threatened. Plus the Time Drone itself provides its owner with near-omniscience, allowing anyone to see plots unfolding in the past! Diet and Dick are probably watching us right now, from the future!” SORRY I KEEP HARPING ON THIS EVERYBODY BUT IT’S TRUE, I WILL NOT BE SILENCED ON THIS POINT!!!! [flips the bird at Diet Smith, who I assume is watching me type this in the future]