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Gil Thorp, 3/26/20

Hey, remember Gil Thorp? Comic about teen sports? Usually pretty reliably nutty? This basketball season plot, about how Chris and Alexa are both basketball players and also only a fraction of a GPA point away from one another in the race for valedictorian, has been so boring that I haven’t talked about it in a month, so here, let me catch you up: the mean bullies who have it in for Chris tried to trick him into studying off a stolen chem test, but Chris didn’t use the stolen test and Alexa exonerated him, and it turns out they only had it in for him because Chris had ignored one of the mean bullies being bullied, three years ago, and anyway Chris had already told the administration that he wanted to be co-valedictorians with Alexa before all this happened. And that’s it! Everything’s fine! Everything’s fine and all drama is over. Except: Chris’s girlfriend from another school is about to make an appearance! Will she hit it off with Alexa, or possibly Phoebe? Does she exist at all? Is she just part of Chris’s long-running lie that he “has a girlfriend” but she “goes to Mercy, in Goshen” and everyone will meet her at his “end-of-season party” and now he’s finally going to run out of room to continue the charade? Why hasn’t this been the engine of the plot for the entire basketball season instead of this extremely dull valedictorian business?

Arctic Circle, 3/26/20

My read on this strip is that the penguins of Arctic Circle and the polar bears of Arctic Circle are friends, but what if they aren’t? I can’t stop thinking about the (I assume polar bear?) hand/paw reaching in from the left of panel three. I really adds to the sense that these polar bears, being obligate carnivores, are about to follow up their unsatisfying vegan shoe snack with some delicious penguin meat, having surrounded and corralled these poor birds before tearing them to bits in a savage, bloody frenzy. And sure, real polar bears don’t hunt in packs, but they don’t drink coffee or talk either, so I think I’m not off-base in imagining some real horror in store here.

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Dick Tracy, 3/25/20

Wow, I’m not sure if Quiver’s little scheme here, which I assume entails having down-and-out folks collect spare change for a nonexistent charity, deserves the noble appellation of con. I expect a con to consist of complex wheels-within-wheels trickery as depicted in the movie The Sting, not a sad little attempt to make rent with a pile of quarters and nickels. Still, it’s nice to see that Shaky wants to get involved — clearly he’s one of those guys who always needs to be productive and can’t sit still and relax a little, despite the fact that he is (and I can’t emphasize this enough) dying.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/25/20

Man, I remember when weddings between members of two rival Hootin’ Holler clans resulted in violence, not passive aggression. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Snuffy Smith is losing its edge.

Curtis, 3/25/20

Not sure what denomination church the Wilkins family attends, but making up fake scripture for personal financial gain is pretty much always considered heresy, right? Never would’ve pegged Curtis for a heretic. You hate to see it.

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Blondie, 3/24/20

When the creators of a long-running legacy comic learn about the existence of some cultural artifact or practice popular among people under 45, and feel obliged to wedge it into their work but are unable to hide the fact that it makes them feel like a weird alien who can no longer recognize their own society — that’s some of my favorite shit, man. I live for it. Anyway, what this strip really should make us realize is that, while Dagwood is usually depicted as playing a lot of Facebook games, a beloved old-person activity, in real life he would absolutely have an Instagram that he updates constantly with pictures of food, right?

Mark Trail, 3/24/20

Oh, ha ha, so, it turns out the cruel blond tween is actually the (presumably biological?) son of the Crowleys! It’s going to be a real treat for Kevin to move from a tenuous position as an orphan to a tenuous position as an adopted child with a new brother who fiercely resents him while his new parents smile obliviously.

Mary Worth, 3/24/20

Ha ha, damn, just one stupid Star Wars parody film and Dawn is head over heels! Hugo had to paint a whole goddamn house!

Dennis the Menace, 3/24/20

I guess this is supposed to be another panel in the “ha ha, Dennis is extremely stupid” category, but what actually comes across is that what we think of as “meat” has made out of something other than animals for years and somehow Joey and Dennis are in on the conspiracy, that that’s frankly terrifying.