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Mark Trail, 9/22/20

Oh man, Woods and Wildlife editor Bill Ellis is just having a fuckin’ meltdown that Mark would even consider tending to his wounded dog instead of flying into New York for the big Conservation Writer of the Year banquet at the Waldorf Astoria. Doesn’t Mark know how much is riding on this? The notoriously cutthroat Conservation Writers of America society will just not give you the award if you don’t show up in person to accept it, so they’ll hand it to the runner-up (some guy from Ranger Rick, probably?) and then Bill, Woods and Wildlife, and their publisher (a disreputable hedge fund that bought the W&W intellectual property at fire sale prices from the Hearst Corporation in 2015) can kiss all those sweet CWotY pageviews and subscription renewals goodbye.

Dick Tracy, 9/22/20

Ha ha, teen girls! This weird professor, who is literally wearing fangs right now, is definitely not into the vampire lifestyle, which he just brought up to see if you were as not into it as he was, even though, as he can’t emphasize enough, it’s all safe and consensual. Here, read these pamphlets and check out these websites! If your opinions about modern, progressive vampirism change, don’t hesitate to get back in touch.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/22/20

CONFIDENTIAL TO BUCK: If the lost revenue from your convention circuit sales is offset by the fact that you no longer have to pay the expenses associated with your convention circuit sales, your business may be, to use a technical term, “unprofitable.”

CONFIDENTIAL TO MINDY: The idea that someone would be glad to be stuck in the house with Buck is not believable. Is this a hostage situation? Are you in danger? Blink twice if you need help.

Pluggers, 9/22/20

A plugger romantic dinner is when a wife constantly begs to go eat somewhere that isn’t fast food, just this once, and her husband finally agrees but he’s really passive aggressive about it all evening.

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Dennis the Menace, 9/21/20

OK, look, Dennis, let’s never mind that Margaret doesn’t even seem to notice you’re there and is heading off on some business of her own. Where on Earth does the phrase “the silence before the storm” comes from? It’s not the actual correct phrase and it also doesn’t repeat the phrasing Joey used in the first panel. Plus it’s not a joke! I’m not even gonna get into the “how menacing is this” shtick right now, I just gotta ask … are you OK, man?

Gasoline Alley, 9/21/20

Meanwhile, these two panels are a real roller coaster, storywise and emotionally! Truly “Ha ha!” is how a congregation would react to a clergyman telling them that today’s sermon will be short, followed by “ooh! ah!” and “wow!” when he smoothly segues into “snakes are mentioned in the bible over 20 times,” which, folks, I may not be an expert in theological oratory, but if I heard the phrase “snakes are mentioned in the bible over 20 times” at the beginning of a sermon, my first thought would not be “oh, this sermon is going to be short,” but rather “ooh! ah! this guy’s gonna tell us about all 20 biblical snake references! wow!” And, honestly, I’d be into it. Obviously we start with the serpent in the Adam and Eve story (and I’d love it he could tell us when that guy started being identified with the devil, because in Genesis he gets cursed by God into leglessness as a punishment for leading Eve astray, and it seems weird for all snakes have no legs because of something the devil did), but I do hope he spends some time on the bad-ass brass snake Moses carried around on a pole that he used to cure snakebites.

Sam and Silo, 9/21/20

Sam’s (or Silo’s? if you think I’m ever going to remember which one of these two is which unless I’m looking directly at a strip where one of them is explicitly addressed by name, you’ve got another thing coming) cat just want out in the extremely dangerous nighttime, for sex. It’s worth it to him! In fact, the possibility he might be mauled to death by a dog just makes the sexual act more intense and erotic! That’s the joke today in Sam and Silo, a comic strip published in, I assume, several family newspapers.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/20/20

Hey, remember Nancy, Kelly’s sneering mean-girl nemesis who tried to key Kelly’s car, back when Kelly was being chauffeured around in a hearse by mobsters because this strip used to be interesting? Well, Nancy briefly tried to do something interesting, but don’t worry: it was prevented from ever happening, off-panel, which is good because otherwise we might have had to watch it happen, instead of getting an entire Sunday strip of virtuous characters talking to each other on the phone.

Hi and Lois, 9/20/20

I genuinely love that (a) techno has been rendered as “boing bop bing” here and (b) that Hi has gone from dubious to extremely over it as Chip works his way through this bit.

Dustin, 9/20/20

You guys, Dustin finally did an actually kind of funny joke! Unfortunately the joke is that Popeye is on TV holding a can labelled “kale.” The punchline to the strip itself is not funny.