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Baby Blues, 12/21/21

Video is an illusion, a series of still images run in sequence so quickly that your brain can’t perceive them as individual pictures and instead smooths them together to create what appears to be movement. In animation, a smear is a trick that can heighten this sense of motion by using an individual frame that itself contains a blur or multiple still images of the moving figure. You can see some great examples here or follow this Twitter feed for more. The technique is also used in comics, sometimes to great effect! But sometimes it implies that a comic strip mom’s face is a nightmarish mass of writhing tentacles just barely contained by a protective mask, and by “protective” in this case, I don’t mean that the mask reduces transmission of the novel coronavirus, but rather that it holds back these awful and presumably slimy face-limbs from bursting out and squeezing the life out of us while we scream in terror.

Mary Worth, 12/21/21

I’m beginning to suspect that the larger point of this Mary Worth storyline is to tap into a near-universal situation: almost all of us have a loved one who is in a relationship with an obviously and objectively terrible person, and it interferes with our own friendship with them. Rather than trying to break them up, Mary implies, we should just accept that people come together for mysterious reasons of their own that we can’t understand. Which is a real cop out, considering that the reason Estelle and Wilbur got back together is because Mary told Estelle to take him back! It’s Mary Worth who’s responsible for your friend’s bad relationship decisions! Here, take this pitchfork and map to Charterstone.

Marvin, 12/21/21

There’s so much about Marvin the comic strip and Marvin the character I find objectionable, but at the top of the list, maybe even above the shitting, is when he gives the audience a smug, knowing look to accentuate some terrible punchline. “Eh?” he seems to asking us today? “Eh? Women be shopping? Sexism? Eh?”

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Dick Tracy, 12/20/21

I know I should be focusing on the fact that Blackjack, a member of Dick’s rogue gallery, owned a collection of Dick Tracy memorabilia and Dick promised to look after it when Blackjack went to prison (presumably because Dick sent him there), but it got stolen and Dick feels a genuine sense of personal failure over this, but I’m sorry, I’m very fixated on “that comes later.” Dick really cares about this stolen Dick Tracy collection business! “Sorry, Tess, you get a hug when you do a BETTER JOB scouring the DARK WEB for Blackjack’s stuff. I expect you to sleep on the couch tonight.”

Daddy Daze, 12/20/21

The Daddy Daze daddy is using all the Daddy Daze baby’s clothes for weird, upsetting art projects, and is also just letting the baby pee and poo into nonabsorbent plastic bubble wrap! I’m beginning to think that his divorce may have been too amiable and the Daddy Daze mommy should maybe reconsider their custody arrangements.

Mary Worth, 12/20/21

Mary, that is frankly a lot of words just to say “Damn, the sex must be incredible.”

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 12/19/21

I initially assumed the solution to this mystery would be animal fact based: bears really do eat salmon and raccoons really do eat lobsters, so the wolf would only get theatrically excited about oysters as part of his criminal middleman routine. But the “strongest alibi” bit truly gets into the Orwellian mindfuck that is life in Slylock’s Forest Kingdom, where you can be immediately found guilty not despite the fact that you have the most evidence pointing to your innocence but because of it! Please do not dwell on the litany of horrors Sly subjected this poor wolf to in order to “convince” him to confess, this is a comic for children.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 12/19/21

Yeah, man, my wife does too? I think think it’s pretty normal for your partner to generally be aware of when you’re in bed, to be honest. Come on, Leroy, this one is a stretch. I am intrigued by the lady who’s just discovered an outlet for her “jolly old elf” fetish, however.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/19/21

I think this is a pretty good look at who would watch this livestream and feel vaguely bad about their contribution to the feeding frenzy over “Cynthia Ivy”‘s real identity: basically normal looking kids and extremely dweeby adults.

Panel from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/19/21

TIRED: Saying “Happy Holidays” is offensive to Real Americans because it diminishes the unique religious importance of Christmas

WIRED: Saying “Happy Holidays” is offensive to Real Americans because it reminds us of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, a strip created by liberal coastal elitists specifically to make fun of the rural poor