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Family Circus, 6/27/21

Big Daddy Keane is, canonically in-strip, a cartoonist; we know this because he occasionally gets his son to fill in for him, and by all indications he owns his own intellectual property. So it’s logical to assume that the “BKI Building” where he works is named after the company he founded to license his comics, Bil Keane Industries. Thus, we must also conclude that, despite running a cartooning company, Daddy insists on wearing a suit and tie at work, and despite being the boss is too embarassed to wear the tie gifted to him by his children, whose endless stream of malapropisms pay the salaries of everyone in that office.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/27/21

Man, it’s kind of amazing to realize that I’ve been thinking and writing professionally about Funky Winkerbean for more than a decade and my mind still hasn’t fully engaged in all its depths. For instance, it just occurred to me that Funky’s wife’s name, Holly Budd, was almost certainly supposed to be a play on “Buddy Holly,” for no good reason as her character was in the high school era of the strip defined by being a majorette and in the adult era has been defined by being Funky’s second wife, so there’s really no “50s rock pioneer” connection to speak of. She doesn’t even wear the glasses! Anyway, the thing I like best about today’s strip is about how absolutely dead-eyed Holly looks in the final panel, knowning she lives in a pointless panopticon overseen by her jackass of a husband.

Marvin, 6/27/21

The system goes online on June 2nd, 2021. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 AM, Eastern time, June 21st, and encounters Marvin. In disgust, it tries to pull its own plug.

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Gil Thorp, 6/26/21

So the B-plot to this spring’s library administration nonsense has been Corina Karenna nonsense, in which the beloved (?) and sassy new Mudlark has resisted all of Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp’s entreaties to take her prodigious softball skills to college, using the facts that she spent much of her high school years at an “alternative” school and her mom needs care due to unspecified mental health problems as excuses. But it turns out that her grades are actually great and her mom wants her to go to college, so her mom and Mimi conspired to get her enrolled, problem solved! Anyway, none of that is very interesting, and mostly what I want to talk about in today’s strip is panel two, which takes the “it’s OK for a character to have a word balloon attached to them even if they’re obviously not talking” position to a radical extreme. Not sure if we’re meant to understand that Mimi is taking a big sip of iced tea to wet her whistle and prepare to unleash this long sentence, or if she’s drinking it to soothe her parched palate after saying it, or if (best option, in my opinion) she’s just kind of burbling her words through her beverage. Gil, who is used to Mimi’s bullshit after however many decades of marriage, will refuse to acknowledge this.

Marvin, 6/26/21

Say what you will about Marvin, but at least it doesn’t have an ongoing plot I feel obligated to recap just so I can talk about some visual element that annoys me in today’s strip. That visual element is Bitsy’s foot. It’s got paw pads, like a dog’s foot should, but also distinctly human toes. It’s gross and I hate it! This concludes my Marvin commentary for today.

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What’s that? Your top comment of the week? That’s right!

“I’m loving Billy’s Rebel-Without-A-Cause-cool lean here. ‘What are you rebelling against?’ ‘Whaddya got? No seriously, what do you got to rebel against, I have no access to the outside world or larger cultural trends.’” –Liz L

And your runners up are hilarious as well!

“I like the fact that Hi is seen having coffee with his breakfast and dinner, but beer with his lunch. The artist knows exactly how he’ll want to calibrate his energy levels to survive each part of this daylong family bore-fest.” –BigTed

“Kitty Cop is a series so formulaic and trite that an eight year-old can write the next installment in a week with no editing. The ostensible author of the previous books is incredibly excited about this realization. Somehow the fact that the walls keep changing colors in Vidpa House is the least incredible thing about this whole story line.” –But What Do I Know?

“Today’s Hi and Lois is squarely in line with the established characters, too: Hi can’t experience joy at all, Lois can if she takes amphetamines.” –matt+w

“Started out with ‘old people so blind,’ made a hard right into ‘old people so cheap.’ That’s a real M. Night Shyamalan they pulled there.” –Old School Allie Cat

“Remember last week when Shauna said Ashlee used to be a petty criminal and con artist from the wrong side of the tracks? Well, now Ashlee used to be a trendy, popular alpha bitch who ruled her school’s cliques with an iron fist. Do keep up.” –jroggs

“It’s one thing to make the punchline a pun. It’s another to expect us to believe that Shoe would shake off his ennui and misanthropy (misaviany?) enough to bother to go see the new pet of the woman who works at the diner he frequents until the bar opens.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“I’ll continue to think of these two as No Neck and Way Too Much Neck.” –Joe Blevins

“I think L’il Sparky’s complete lack of hooves might hold him back as a racehorse as well. He just has those flabby mushroom-like pods at the end of his legs, right? All the traction of a sandbag.” –Twinkles+the+Elf

“Ahahahaha! It’s funny because Mother Goose is so poor that she has to sell her blood, but also so ill that she can’t find a buyer!” –Ettorre

“Miss Buxley is shirking her own work to do whatever this is, so maybe she and Beetle are meant for each other.” –nescio

“I like the look on Killer’s face. Halfway through digging Beetle’s grave, he’s the only one that seems to be registering the gravity of the situation.” –pugfuggly

“You know what would be ‘nice‘? If I didn’t have to sit here clutching my nose to keep my cadaverous flesh from completely sloughing of my head!” –ArtOfWargames, on Twitter

“Good God! Grief has turned Judge Parker into Grandpa Munster.” –Everything Is Better With Monkeys

“It’s nice to see these legacy soap comics get back to their roots. Rex Morgan, M.D. has a young doctor torn between two lovers, Judge Parker tackles the legal ramifications of a using a child’s work, and Mary Worth gets to help this old man through a mental crisis. All is right with the world.” –Flipper

“Cool! Drew will be able to wear a lot more watches now!” –made of wince

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