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Blondie, 9/29/20

We are all, of course, concerned about the amount of time that Elmo, a child, spends with Dagwood Bumstead, an adult with whom he does not live and is not related. Today it looks like Blondie and Dagwood have come up with a sensible solution to the problem: if Elmo wants to talk with them about, say, getting unwanted attention from someone at school, a subject best handled by his parents and his teachers, they will interact with him out on their front sidewalk, respond only with nonspecific noises, and under no circumstances allow him into the house.

Mary Worth, 9/29/20

“Like, just imagine if my husband and I loved each other! Pretty crazy world that would be, huh?”

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Shoe, 9/28/20

A thing I will never get tired of is the facial expressions in Shoe, which convey a message that is very much not “ha ha, we’re birds but we think we’re people!” and really much more “God, the burden of existence is crushing.” The Perfesser’s look in panel one is one that we’re used to, basically conveying the message that everything has been going so badly for so long that he can’t feel anything any more; Irv, on the other hand, is looking at his phone with a narrow-eyed rage that I honestly find refreshing. Sure, he’s made a lot of money off this car over the years, but it’s garbage, you understand, garbage, and he refuses to work on it anymore. It offends him as a mechanic that it’s even in his garage, and he’s tired of the Perfesser not recognizing this essential truth.

Mary Worth, 9/28/20

I love how everyone’s take on Iris at this point is “She seems in good spirits, but we don’t see her around much, because of all the sex she’s having.” This isn’t just idle gossip, though: Mary is of course the main power on the Charterstone condo board, and Toby, with Madi’s help, cemented her own influence with a perfect dessert. It seems like somebody is going to be dragged before the next board meeting, confronted with the HOA bylaws about owner occupancy, and slut-shamed into paying some hefty fines.

Mark Trail, 9/28/20

Wow, did Mark have to sleep on the couch because his open weeping about Andy was too annoying? That is ice cold, Cherry.

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Marvin, 9/27/20

It’s become something of a cliche for me to complain on this here blog about how the widely syndicated newspaper comic strip Marvin is just obsessed with poop, but I have to say that I can’t remember of an instance of them actually just showing a steaming turd in the strip? (Other than the noxious title character, of course! [ba-dum-dum]) That’s why I confess I’m vaguely intrigued that the punchline (“punchline”) panel here depicts snowdrift-thick piles of bird shit on Jeff’s car. Why do you suppose they can get away with that and not actual Marvin poop? My guess it’s because bird crap looks just different enough from our own excrement (since this is a Sunday strip, it’s colored by the original artist and really captures that real-life white-brown tinge) that it’s not quite as taboo, but … I dunno man, I feel like this is testing our boundaries and we need to launch a prim letter-writing campaign about community standards or things could get very, very dark in this strip. (Dark brown, I mean, because we’re going to be seeing lots of drawings of Marvin’s feces.)

Hagar the Horrible, 9/27/20

Hagar has come back from a long voyage robbing and pillaging, and his house seems to have been abandoned — maybe his family has left him, or maybe they’ve been kidnapped and enslaved by a rival raiding Viking band. Or they could just be dead! Hagar doesn’t seem to care much, though. Ha … ha?

Dustin, 9/27/20

I’m choosing to believe that Meg overheard yesterday’s stupid conversations about redundancies, got as mad about it as I did, and is now just rubbing her dad’s nose in it so he never, ever brings up the subject again.