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Dustin, 1/22/21

Ha ha, ladies, amiright folks? They definitely be shopping, and they also be using their purse for its intended purpose of carrying things around rather than just leaving it empty!

Gil Thorp, 1/22/21

Oh, right, in addition to the Vic and Doug storylines, this Gil Thorp basketball season also features a girl’s basketball storyline, about beloved (?) new Mudlark Corina Karenna, and how maybe she has some beef against Tessi Milton that she displays by sassing her in very mild ways like calling her by her last name, or maybe she’s just mildly sassy in general, who can say. Anyway, I’m definitely not saying that girls’ Gil Thorp storylines are less interesting than boys’ Gil Thorp storylines in a larger abstract sense, but I am going to say that Corina needs to get sassier by like two orders of magnitude if she wants to compete with Vic’s hot dog giveaways for my attention.

Mark Trail, 1/22/21

From the comic strip that brought you Boatsplosion! and Boatsplosion 2: The Boatsplosioning, comes: Boatsplosion III: Fireworks Yacht.

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Gil Thorp, 1/21/21

We’re now in the midst of what I call the “fun and games” section of a Gil Thorp storyline, where everyone’s zany character premises are given free reign to run wild before some inevitable conflict results. In the current case, we have newly minted PA announcer Vic Doucette getting drunk with power and arranging hot dog giveaways on his own initiative, and car fanatic Doug Guthrie continuing to be a fanatic about cars in any given context. Presumably these two are in for a fall soon enough, when Coach Thorp tells Vic that it’s all well and good for a nerd to offer supporting services to jocks but he needs to keep in mind that jocks are the reason we’re all here so let’s keep the focus on them and Doug gets caught up in a car-fucking scandal, respectively.

Crankshaft, 1/21/21

Oh, I didn’t talk about it here, but Crankshaft’s beloved Beans End catalog didn’t go out of business after all, but instead got absorbed by Buddyblog, the Funkyverse’s catch-all Internet company whose primary business seems to be demonstrating that the Internet in particular and young people in general are bad, actually. Anyway, remember how it used to be a whole big thing in this strip that Crankshaft overcame illiteracy as an older adult? Well, cut him some slack, Lillian, maybe he’s never going to read cozy mysteries for fun, just let him enjoy his damn gardening catalog in peace without judgement.

Family Circus, 1/21/21

You couldn’t pay enough to go look it up, but I’m willing to guess that this joke, slightly modified, has run in newspapers on quite a few January 21sts over the years, and while normally I would roll my eyes at yet another moronic Jeffyism, I have to say that it’s nice to see that, after a few violent hiccups, the hallowed ceremonies that surround the presidential transfer of power are proceeding as scheduled.

Mary Worth, 1/21/21

“It’s almost like she … doesn’t want to talk to me? But that can’t be right.”

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Blondie, 1/20/21

Much as I would like to live in a world where, even in bland suburban communities like the one where the Bumsteads live, there are standalone storefronts that cater entirely to readers of niche publications like Vinyl and Fish and Giants Fan, I feel I must point out that even full-service bookstores are having a hard time staying afloat in the age of Amazon, so I am forced to describe the setting of today’s Blondie as “wholly unrealistic.” I’m trying to imagine the sequence of decisions that led to the creation of today’s strip, and while it makes sense that the writer of a legacy newspaper strip would imagine a paradise where print media still ruled, I think it’s more likely that they came up with a magazine joke first and were trying to figure out where to set it and thought “magazine … store?” and decided to call it a day at that point.

Dennis the Menace, 1/20/21

Gina has long been one of the less interesting characters in Dennis the Menace, since her whole deal seems to be “a girl, but less annoying than Margaret.” But she’s certainly shot to the top of the menacing charts with her new project, the Neighborhood Racial Purity Census.

Hi and Lois, 1/20/21

Dawg’s dead, everyone. Dawg’s dead and he’s in heaven now. Pour one out for Dawg, the beloved dog character from the syndicated newspaper comic Hi and Lois!