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Gil Thorp, 8/23/21

Say what you will about Gil Thorp, and I’ve said a lot, but at least it has a certain level of realism that other strips lack, in the sense that it’s about a high school sports program and the teams have mediocre seasons more often than not, like most high school teams do. This realism even extends to its characters’ everyday non-sports lives! Did you know that proving your mettle with some cool detective work isn’t going to secure you a journalism career? It really isn’t! Sorry, Heather! I guess you’ll be breaking the glass ceiling and becoming the first woman to get an unpaid “job” coaching high school football in Milford, I’m sure that will open up all sorts of opportunities for you.

Dick Tracy, 8/23/21

One of my favorite sci-fi short stories is Isaac Asimov’s “The Dead Past,” about a near-future society where technology that can view the past has been invented but its nature is kept secret and its use is heavily restricted by the government, and a group of heroic historians and scientists manage to reinvent it and publish the plans worldwide, only to realize too late that a machine that can see 1,000 years into the past can also see 30 seconds into the past and they’ve just eliminated privacy for everyone, everywhere, forever. Dick is going to be thrilled to hear about this invention, in other words.

Rex Mogan, M.D., 8/23/21

“Plus, uh, remember all that stolen valor I did? Probably for the best not to invite those guys, is what I’m saying. I’m all about the future, not the past!”

Curtis, 8/23/21

You can put your dad’s face on your social media accounts, Curtis, but his butt? That’s reserved for paying subscribers to big_ass_greg’s OnlyFans account.

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/22/21

Continuity comic strips are actually a great example of how you can have a long-running narrative art form with very little narrative tension. Nevertheless, Funky Winkerbean does have one primary source of narrative friction: namely, that Les is a sainted figure who everyone has to acknowledge as a good guy and work to make good things happen for him, but also the universe is a fundamentally dark and hostile place and nothing truly good ever happens to anyone. I guess today’s strip is showing us how we’ll navigate between those two poles: Lisa’s Story: The Movie will be mostly ignored by the yammering, moronic masses who don’t understand how moving it is when a man’s wife dies of cancer but he finds the strength to move on, but the right kind of people will watch it at America’s few remaining art house theaters and be moved, and won’t that be the most important thing? Not from the perspective of the people who invested in this movie, or for anyone’s career who worked on it, but from it is from Les’s perspective, which is the correct one.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/22/21

Speaking of the absence of narrative tension, there’s a lot you could say about the last few years of Rex Morgan and its absence of narrative tension, but one thing you can’t say is that it skimps on good reaction faces. Today Michelle moves from “carefully neutral as she worries what she’s gotten herself into,” “real genuine horror as she sees something the Facebook moderators should’ve removed immediately,” “bone-weary disgust at someone posting a picture of themselves wearing a t-shirt adorned with grotesque sex slang or maybe a racial slur,” and “grudging admiration for what hairspray can do.” We salute you, Michelle, and certainly hope your animated visage helps the seven or so people at your wedding maintain interest in the proceedings.

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Family Circus, 8/21/21

I have already shamefully admitted that I kind of like Billy when he’s being surly and aggressively ignorant, so this this panel is a real treat. The best part, though is how bored and antsy everyone else looks as well. Even Daddy is yawning while he’s trying to read about erosion or whatever! Billy’s just saying what we’re all thinking!

Gil Thorp, 8/21/21

“I just turned down a boring-ass sports story, which is normally the sort of thing we’d print, but it wasn’t a boring-ass high school sports story, so I figured it wasn’t right for us, even though — and I can’t emphasize this enough — we’re supposed to be a real grown-up newspaper, not the high school journalism club or anything like that. Anyway, it’s Saturday, so I assume there’s a new plot starting next week! Maybe it’ll be high school sports related!”

Pluggers, 8/21/21

Pluggers have no idea what time it is or where they are or where they’re going or when they’re supposed to get there, and that’s OK! Their journey is valid and I respect it.