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Baby Blues, 6/29/20

I don’t want you think that I’m constantly raging against Marvin’s incessant piss and shit jokes is because I’m against bathroom humor per se. It’s the “incessant” part that really gets me; of course some judiciously applied poop humor is an important part of any comic strip with child characters. Today’s Baby Blues genuinely made me laugh, for instance! I particularly like the expression on the dog’s face in panel two. He just wanted to poop on his walk like he always does, safe in the assumption that his owner would clean it up, and now he’s embarrassed! He never asked to be part of this!

Gasoline Alley, 6/29/20

You know what didn’t make me laugh? Today’s Gasoline Alley, which is about desperate homeless people breaking into circus animals’ cages to eat their food! I’m not even going to bother describing the plotline we’re in the middle of here, because it doesn’t actually provide any context for today’s strip, which, I can’t emphasize enough, is about people so poor and hungry that they need to eat circus animal feed to survive, Jesus Christ.

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Oh, boy, we’re past the innovators and now the hardcore legacy strips have apparently decided “FINE, it looks like this whole coronavirus pandemic isn’t going to just go away on its own, let’s TALK about it, I guess.” How’d they do?

Hagar the Horrible, 6/28/20

Hagar the Horrible is mostly oblique, and indeed the throwaway panels seem to be statement of purpose to keep the strip coronavirus-free. I genuinely enjoy the choice here for Dr. Zook to throw his bag in frustration, sending his medical equipment scattering across Hagar’s bed, and was definitely not anticipating the vampiric twist!

Shoe, 6/28/20

It seems that birds can’t contract the coronavirus, so today’s strip gives us an interesting glimpse into the nature of the Shoe bird-men’s society: though they are immune to humanity’s diseases, they are apparently still dependent on us for televised entertainment.

Dennis the Menace, 6/28/20

The elderly like the Wilsons are at particular risk from COVID-19, so I really appreciate George’s total commitment to his bit, by which I mean he identifies a global pandemic that’s killed hundreds of thousands of people and crippled the world economy with the five-year-old kid next door who he just fucking hates.

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Gil Thorp, 6/27/20

So, uh, the slobs vs. snobs battle between Milford and the alternative school is ending actually fairly realistically, with the snobs kicking the crap out of the slobs, to the extent that one of the Milford kids came in to pitch for the other team and is offering advice to try to staunch the bleeding. This is pretty sad, actually, but I’m hoping the bad kids are just lulling the Mudlarks into a sense of complacency, so that their guard will be down when the stabbing starts

Dick Tracy, 6/27/20

Ugh, you guys, Shaky sucks as a villain so bad, he’s so low-stakes and his personality is dumb as well, like the only thing that’s interesting about him is that he’s a biological sex toy and they haven’t even talked about that except that one time. His current grift involves stealing belt buckles for some reason and, when confronted with his crime, he both denies it and hurls the belt buckle in question at the cops, and somehow he managed to make even that boring.

Marvin, 6/27/20

Folks, we all know Marvin is a comic strip about people going to the bathroom and dogs going to the bathroom. But did you know it’s also about birds going to the bathroom? Truly, the lesson here is that no matter how secure you feel in your position, you should never stop innovating, creatively.