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Gasoline Alley, 8/3/21

Folks, let me confide something in you. I was relishing the prospect of just tearing in to today’s Gasoline Alley for using a “joke” that, I was very sure, had been passed around by old people via Facebook and emails with “Fw: FWD: Fw: Re: Fw: Its good to laugh” in the subject line for years if not decades. I even went through the trouble of confirming that Rufus and Joel’s mule was indeed named “Betsy” so I could joke that Betsy looked absolutely furious about this shameful reuse of mediocre folk humor in a professional syndicated comic strip. All that remained was for me to do a little advanced Google searching, narrowed by date, to figure out exactly how old this joke was. But at the very beginning of my quest, I was confronted by something that truly shook me to my core:

There it is, everybody: proof that somehow, this goofy line about GPS standing for “getting places sooner” (and yes, I also checked “gettin’”, same results) was apparently invented by the Gasoline Alley creative team, and yet it has the feel of the sort of thing down-home salt-of-the-earth folks have been saying to each other since GPS was widely commercialized in the early ’00s. I hereby retract anything cruel I may have said about this strip’s cornpone vibes. Gasoline Alley is in fact frighteningly efficient and accurate about its mission in ways I never could’ve dreamed of.

Pluggers, 8/3/21

Meanwhile, over in Pluggers, I think we’re finally ready for Pluggers to just settle in with a series of increasingly baroque versions of “pluggers are old, meaning that they were born in years that are earlier than most other people’s birth years.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/2/21

“Hey,” you almost certainly are not thinking, “Wasn’t Mason trying to make a Lisa’s Story movie the right way, and they had gotten into filming but then there was a fire that burned huge swaths of Los Angeles to the ground? Whatever happened with that? Did they cancel the production because it’s so obviously cursed?” Sadly, they apparently continued to spit in the face of the gods and are determined to see this thing out to the end, and now they’re having a big-time Hollywood “wrap party”! Cayla has once again proved herself an unworthy partner to Les because the prospect of going to a fun, elite event is filling her with excitement, instead of the crushing ennui that is the only acceptable emotion to experience about anything in the Funkyverse.

Dick Tracy, 8/2/21

Look, actually making comics might not be very lucrative, but making them into games or collecting them is another story. I’m beginning to think this Dick Tracy storyline is a plea to comics creators to grasp the importance of ancillary revenue streams before it’s too late.

Mary Worth, 8/2/21

I know we’re supposed to think that Drew is thinking of his ex while trying and failing to concentrate on some poor doomed patient’s chart, but I for one very much hope that he’s walking around with a clipboard holding an 8 1/2 by 11 headshot of Ashlee — exactly the image in his thought balloon — and nothing else.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/1/21

“I suppose some people need more adventure in their lives, or in the lives of the people they read about in serialized entertainment. Like, they want medical drama or gunplay or kidnapping or something fun like that! Why can’t they just watch a guy throw a ball back and forth with his dogs and children, forever? If they need a real thrill, they should think about this: there’s a chlorine shortage and we might have to go without the pool for a few days! Probably not, though, we’re rich and we have connections.”

Dennis the Menace, 8/1/21

This is a rambling, rhythmless strip with no real punchline, but it has a terrible, delicious moment at its core, where a smiling Mrs. Wilson confides to Dennis that “Believe it or not, Mr. Wilson used to be happy.” He’s not happy any more, of course! He’s profoundly unhappy. But at least he’s asleep now. Have a cookie, dear.