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Funky Winkerbean, 10/21/19

OK, here’s the deal: in general, I like it when the characters in Funky Winkerbean suffer, because I find them all morally and personally repellent. However, I don’t like it when they use their own suffering as proof of their nobility, and I actively despite it when everyone falls all over themselves to praise the sufferers for being amazing. Sure, Mason could play a dumb “action hero,” like Starbuck Jones, a character millions of people love and want to see on screen, or, as panel two shows suggests, like Wally, a guy who fought in a war and was held captive for years and now works at a depressing pizza parlor for a living, but he’d rather be remembered (by Oscar and Golden Globe voters) as a real hero: a guy who stayed married to his wife when she was diagnosed with cancer and was more or less supportive of her until she died, after which point he started cashing in and never stopped. At least when people gave the characters in Woody Wilson-era Judge Parker undeserved praise and cash, it was funny.

Gil Thorp, 10/21/19

Chet, I’m pretty sure that once you’ve achieved the rank of don within the mafia, you pay other people to act out, pull teachers’ hair, and throw scissors at classmates for you. I’m gonna need you to come back with a better metaphor for this one!

Dennis the Menace, 10/21/19

Not sure what I find funnier here: the idea that Dennis has some elaborate curtain/roller-shade window treatment in his room, that he uses his roller-shade for his “bad boy” art (a picture of a child with his tongue stuck out), or that this self-professed “menace” is too cowardly to let his mother know about his vandalism/budding art career.

Mary Worth, 10/21/19

Hot on the heels of discovering that Iris is fucking herself into a state of exhaustion with her new boytoy, we now learn that Wilbur is focusing on just singing with Estelle because he, too, worries about his own sexual stamina, as he idly stares at this bottle of “VIGOR VITAMINS” at the sketchy supplement store at the mall and wonders if they’ll be enough to restore his declining libido. There has been lots of talk in the comments about Iris and Wilbur improbably ending up back together, and finally we have a good reason why they should: they’re both just too tired to do it anymore, and honestly it would be kind of relief to be with someone who doesn’t expect anything from them, sexually.

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Gasoline Alley, 10/20/19

Oh my goodness, Gasoline Alley trufans: Gasoline Alley’s 101st anniversary is coming up in just one month! Are you ready to spread the word, with the #One hundred and one hashtag? You’ve got thirty days to figure out what a hashtag is and what you’re supposed to do with it! The clock is ticking!

Mary Worth, 10/20/19

Oh, in case you thought there was going to be some big mystery about why Iris is so tired, there isn’t. She and Zak have just been fucking too much! He’s going to give her one night where she gets to sleep the whole time. Then: back to the fucking.

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Dick Tracy, 10/19/19

Earlier this month I went to that deciding Dodgers-Nationals playoff game where the home team’s seemingly comfortable lead melted away late in the game and turned into a rout, and there were definitely folks who started trooping out when things started going against the boys in blue even though there was still hope they could turn things around. And yeah, they all probably had much longer trips home than we did and wanted to beat traffic, but I’m a bitter-ender by nature, and always feel a certain frisson of contempt for people who go through the trouble and expense of seeing a live event but then don’t stay for the whole thing. Does that mean I endorse incapacitating, or possibly murdering, someone with a quick hypodermic to the neck if they want to get up and leave a performance of Our Town when the Stage Manager’s closing soliloquy has just begun? Well, not exactly, but I do understand why you might feel the urge to do it to them.

Gil Thorp, 10/19/19

It took me a while to figure out, but Chet, who’s determined to win his stepson’s love and/or respect by interfering in his high school athletics career, is the same Chet on the school board who Hadley V. Baxendale threatened to personally sue if he tried to stop a kid she knew from illegally attending school in a district where he didn’t live. This explains a lot about his motivation at this pivotal moment in the current storyline. He’s already had it rubbed in his face that rules and “doing the right thing” don’t matter, and the only way to get ahead in life is to have a powerful patron. Now he has the opportunity to use his own position of power to clear the way for a family member, and by god he’s going to take it.

Family Circus, 10/19/19

I’m an only child of parents who separated before I was three, and while I’m not going to deny it caused some emotional bumps in the road for me growing up, it also wasn’t without certain advantages for a boy who did not and still does not particularly like sharing things or space with other people. So yeah, I relate to Gary here, whose smug little smile seems to be telling us that “Pretty much all I have to say is ‘well, at dad’s house I get to do this’ and suddenly I get to do that at mom’s house too. Oh, you have to share this cramped little place with two adults and three other kids? How quaint, for you.”