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Tina’s Groove, 1/24/25

A thing about being a monarch is that nobody can stop you from doing all sorts of awful sicko stuff, and usually this takes the form of wars or religious persecution or what have you, but sometimes it just means they get to play out their sadistic whims. A particularly sadistic one is “raising a baby that nobody ever speaks to in the hopes that it will talk and we’ll learn what God’s original language is,” and there really must be something to this because supposedly four different rulers — Pharaoh Psamtik I, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, King James IV of Scotland, and the Mughal Emperor Akbar — supposedly tried it. There’s some doubt that any of these experiments really took place, although the recorded end of Frederick’s — “But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments” — seems grimly plausible.

Anyway, it doesn’t sound like Greg’s upbringing was that extreme, but still, it does seem like he’s the subject of some kind of experiment? Maybe to see if, never having met another soul outside his family in his whole sad sack life, he’d fall in love with the anxious, depressive protagonist of Tina’s Groove? She had a boyfriend a a couple weeks ago, but she’s on the prowl for hot (?) friends’ cousins now, apparently!

Blondie, 1/24/25

Speaking of people isolated from outside stimulus, I will note that Blondie appears to be hearing “I am woman, hear me roar,” a line from a Helen Reddy song released in 1971, for the first time, and I would actually like to see an analysis of what parts of her brain are “modern suburban wife and caterer” and what parts are “flapper girl from the 1930s.” I think that’d be a real interesting experiment, honestly! Not sure if we could do it with an MRI machine or what, I leave the implementation details to the eggheads.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/24/25

I was going to suggest that Hootin’ Holler was so isolated from mainstream society that its inhabitants are ignorant of even basic cryptid information, which explains why Jughaid seems to confuse “snowman” in the sense of the folk art he’s creating in his yard with the mysterious shaggy man-like beast of the Himalayas. But clearly Snuffy is well steeped in the lore, so I guess we just have to admit that Jughaid is kind of dumb.

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Gearhead Gertie, 1/23/25

Today’s Gearhead Gertie is actually a pretty great commentary about how modern fandoms of all stripes have slowly transformed from genuine expressions of enthusiasm into parasocial relationships between fans and the corporations that churn out the content they crave. You’d think that a NASCAR superfan would need a drone in order to get views of the race from angles that you simply can’t see on TV or even sitting in the stands. But no, Gertie would simply never dream of violating the sacred media rights agreements NASCAR has signed with their distribution partners FOX Sports, NBC Sports, Amazon’s Prime Video, and TNT Sports. Instead, she’s using the drone to harass the unfortunate workers tasked with delivering the overpriced licensed trinkets that tide her over between officially sanctioned broadcasts of racing action.

Marvin, 1/23/25

I must offer further grudging respect to Marvin for reaching new levels of villainy this week. Sure, “I should get to piss and shit myself as long as I want and that’s my parents’ problem” is grotesque, but it honestly pales in comparison to “Your parents are doing something for you because it makes you happy, which is a psyop. Do not fall for it and express any pleasure whatsoever!”

Mary Worth, 1/23/25

Wait, Jared, are you counting Jess, who you dumped Dawn for, and who I’m pretty sure has never interacted with her before today, as Dawn’s friend? Because I don’t think that really counts! I don’t think you really count, to be perfectly honest.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/22/25

So with Kelly out of the house, Summer has been whining about being bored and lonely to everyone she knows, and by “everyone she knows” I mean her daughter and her two coworkers and that’s it, which is very clearly part of the problem. The way the whining went is that she would say “What if I got back into the dating scene! Ha ha! Wouldn’t that be crazy” and other people were like “Uh you know there are lots of other things you could do outside the house, right” and Summer was like “What I’m hearing is that you think I should find a man, for sex.” Anyway, I’m loving the footnote in panel two, assuring us that Summer’s first pass at finding a sex partner isn’t really ending with the guy having a stroke right there at the table and Summer just sighing heavily rather than attempting to find medical help for him. He’s just boring!

Slylock Fox, 1/22/25

Both these panels take place as part of the awful Event that saw animals abruptly become sapient and our human world violently transformed into the animal-dominated realm of Slylock and his Forest Kingdom apparatus of oppression. In the first panel, the wolf, still puzzled by his newfound knowledge of the world, is merely aping the predatory stories he’s discovered in human fairy tales about animals; in the second, the wolf is angry at the humiliation heaped upon the animal characters in those books and has decided to elaborately act out one of those stories but change the ending in an act of bloody revenge. It’s a subtle change but I trust you are discerning enough to pick up on the different vibes. In both panels, that’s a real human femur leaning up against the bed, licked clean, as evidence of the carnage that’s already occurred and an indication of more to come.