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Mary Worth, 6/18/21

Ah, yes, Shauna and Ashlee “ran in the same circles,” definitely a phrase that someone who ran in those circles would use! Also they ran in those circles as teens, which leads me to ask: how old are they supposed to be now? Like, Drew, a successful doctor, has to be in his mid 30s at least, right? But if these ladies’ minds are still dominated by high school drama, they’re probably … a lot younger than that, which adds another data point to how we should think about Drew’s whole romantic deal, I guess! Just rescuing sexy 23-year-old bad girl after sexy 23-year-old bad girl with his love, surely one of them will be different when she’s with him, he’s just got to find her, darn it.

Dustin, 6/18/21

One of the things Dustin gets very wrong about young people is that it seems to believe they spend a lot of time looking for love at fern bars. Because its older characters are married and settled down, we get less of a look at their outside-the-family social life, but apparently the strip believes that older people spend time at bars wearing suits, drinking wine or liquor, and talking shit about young people? Gonna go ahead and say that seems moderately more accurate.

Hi and Lois, 6/18/21

I guess it’s probably for the best that neither Chip nor Mr. Waverling knows that “bucket list” is a list of things you do before you “kick the bucket,” i.e., die, because otherwise the question “Say, old man, got any plans for your few remaining years of life?” might seem kind of rude. Also, based on his cruel yet triumphant expression in the final panel, Mr. Waverling’s “barrel list” involves a barrel of sarin gas and a plan to have his revenge on the world that never appreciated his genius.

Judge Parker, 6/18/21

In its quest to stay relevant for the emerging Zoomer generation, Judge Parker is pivoting from “brooding, wealthy men of action” to “hot sad girls” and, you know what, as near as I can tell that’s a smart move, score one for Judge Parker.

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Gil Thorp, 6/17/21

Good news, everyone! The library fight in Gil Thorp has ended in a classic “We’re not so different, you and I” situation, in which Abel wants to cut government funding from public services and Zane wants public services to pivot to profit-making ventures. Surely there’s some beautiful synergy to be had there! Hey, you’re probably wondering why library workers tend to be such stick in the muds about patrons eating or drinking in the library, and as a former library worker I can tell you that it is 100% because food attracts bugs and mice and bugs and mice eat books. Just putting that out there! Anyway, the important thing is that Zane has defeated Kathy’s dad in the marketplace of ideas, and that has Kathy all hornt up, which means that natural balance has been restored to the universe.

Pluggers, 6/17/21

My sympathy is with this poor dog-child. Can you imagine a plugger leaving comments on your social media posts? While making that facial expression? Truly chilling.

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Slylock Fox, 6/16/21

A human can outrun all of these animals … over a short distance, yes. But what if the animals started thinking in the long term? What if they created their own society, and laws, and hired a fox detective who uses steely logic and will never give up in pursuit of his targets? This particular human is right to look scared at the prospect. He doesn’t know the true face of terror, not yet.

UPDATE: Ha ha, whooops, I misread this, apologies, I have been eaten by a bear

Mary Worth, 6/16/21

Sorry I talk so much about comic book time on here, but darn it, just keeps getting more and more relevant the more years I keep doing this blog, in which I talk about comic strip characters who never grow any older! A somewhat underdiscussed corollary of this phenomenon is that since said characters stay the same age, we have to assume that all the wild adventures we’ve watched them have take place when they’re that age, which is to say within a fairly compressed period of time. Take, for instance, Dr. Drew’s brief, ill-fated romance with his coworker Liza, which took place in 2011, or his even more ill-fated relationship with Dawn, which took place four years before that. Since everyone involved was the same age then as they are now, does that mean that, in the world of the strip, they all ended about a year ago, give or take? Did Shauna pickpocket her way into Drew’s heart before or after all that? Are we meant to understand that Drew and Shauna were engaged in hot, dysfunctional action somewhere in the background while we were forced to endure the endless Saul/Eve thing? Because that would be a true betrayal of the compact between reader and comics creator, in my opinion.

Blondie, 6/16/21

Speaking of comic book time, a thing that I like to occasionally dwell on is that in the origins of this strip, Blondie was a notorious flapper and Dagwood the heir to a family fortune who was slumming in the same scenes as her in the roaring ’20s, but he gave his inheritance up when he married her and since then they’ve slowly become generic middle-class suburbanites, their histories forgotten. I always think it’d be fun to call back to that now and then, though obviously due to the passage of time that specific history now no longer makes sense, so here’s my proposal for a reboot: occasional flashbacks to Blondie and Dagwood, drug-addled New York City club kids in the late ’80s/early ’90s, you’re welcome everybody. Oh, and Dagwood was fucking Blondie’s roommate behind her back, I guess.