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Mary Worth, 4/19/21

Oh, wow, I don’t think we’ve ever seen Dr. Jeff’s distinguished McMansion before, have we? Generally, Mary prefers her cozy condo to the echoing, (emotionally) empty halls of Chez Cory; she might occasionally stop by with an enormous bowl of brown nutrient goo to ensure that her beau doesn’t starve to death before she deigns to go to the Bum Boat with him ten to fifteen business days hence, but my guess is she tends not to linger.

Anyway, is Dr. Drew also just briefly stopping by to make sure his father hasn’t fallen and broken his hip, or are we meant to understand that he still lives with his dad, despite being well into his 30s? That might explain his dissatisfaction, considering that if he tried to bring home one of the ladies who’s smitten with him for a little action, Dr. Jeff would probably be there in the kitchen, smiling and offering to ladle out some “delicious” “turkey” “stew” for her.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/19/21

Among the other things that the coronavirus pandemic destroyed is the barely comprehensible logic of the time gap between Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft. It’s simple, really: the events in the current Crankshaft strips are definitely taking place ten years before the events of Funky Winkerbean, except that both strips are emerging from the pandemic at the same time. Makes a ton of sense! Maybe we’re meant to understand that Funky Winkerbean takes place ten years from now after an even worse plague that’s displaced coronavirus from our discourse as “the [unnamed] pandemic.” Anyway, whatever’s going on over there, it’s sure making everyone miserable!

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Panel from The Lockhorns, 4/18/21

So … is Loretta over there audibly lying about her age to those women? Or is this just how Leroy strikes up conversations at parties? Honestly this shows an even looser grasp of social norms than all the times he ends up wearing a lampshade on his head and dancing with women three times his height.

Dennis the Menace, 4/18/21

It seems out of character for Dennis to be too scared to jump into the deep end of the pool, and it’s honestly pretty weird for him to climb up on the high board as he explains why he’s not planning on jumping off. There’s only one explanation I can come up with: he’s trying to really sell how scary the whole thing is so that nobody jumps off the diving board. Margaret’s obviously spent weeks getting more and more excited about all the social clout she’ll derive from this shindig, so ruining it even at the expense of his devil-may-care image is a truly menacing act on Dennis’s part. Look, it’s already working on Joey!

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Mark Trail, 4/17/21

You know, one thing I didn’t really like about the first plot of new-look Mark Trail was that it lacked truly cartoonishly hateable villain — yes, confronting the sins of one’s father has a long literary history, but you sort of knew that this was a complex relationship that would eventually, after a fashion, be healed. But a guy who used to go to high school with Mark, who’s real condescending to him and is now some kind of cricket-based protein powder impresario and social medial influencer? That’s a guy who we’re all hoping goes viral on Bikbok when Mark punches him in the face.

Blondie and Dennis the Menace, 4/7/21

I’ve always assumed that Blondie is going for a whole Dennis vs. Mr. Wilson vibe in its Dagwood and Elmo strips, and I have to say that it simply does not come anywhere close to it. There’s a real sense of animus there that Blondie’s anodyne amiability is simply incapable of capturing.

Pluggers, 4/7/21

I don’t usually praise the art in Pluggers, but I genuinely love the expression on kangaroo-lady’s face here. That is 100% the look of a woman who plans to file for divorce two weeks to the day after she gets her second vaccine dose, and has in fact taken any number of concrete steps to make that process go as quickly as possible.