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Six Chix, 7/17/19

I really have to admire the amount of absurd world-building packed into this single panel. What you have here is a very small fishbowl, containing three fish, two of whom are mobsters (right? that’s what the implications of the dark glasses and the … hat and pipe … are supposed to be?), and they’re about to murder fish #3, for winning at cards. This just brings up a whole slew of other questions: What is the point of a criminal gang in a tiny community like a fishbowl, especially if two thirds of the inhabitants are members? What will the all-mafia society look like after poor Vince is killed? Is the (presumable) human owner of this fishbowl, the one who’s going to fish poor Vince out and flush him down the toilet, going to go out and buy a new fish to bring into the mix? Well the mobster-fish then bilk that fish out of its money at cards, by skill, cheating, or violence? What use is money in a society made up of three people (or three sapient fish) and no manufactured goods? Lots to think about, please email me your essays on the topic!

Curtis, 7/17/19

Nice try, Greg! The term “millennial” is slippery, but almost every definition sets the cutoff birth years in the mid-to-late 90s, which means the very youngest millennials are more than 20 years old at this point! Your son is “Gen Z” or whatever they’re going to end up calling themselves. You know who may well be a millennial is you, Greg, as the top of that cohort is in its late 30s at this point. “LOL,” as you kids say! (As a Gen-Xer, I personally can’t wait for the Generational Wars to end with Generation [Unpronounceable Glyph] refusing to interact with us in any way until it comes time for them to harvest the precious moisture in our bodies.)

Funky Winkerbean, 7/17/19

I don’t think I’d noticed before that Young Cliff Anger looks uncannily like handsome movie actor Mason Jarre. You’d think with a mug like that he wouldn’t have to be a writer to make it in Hollywood! Oh, wait, right, the Communism meant he couldn’t show his pretty face in polite company. Well, at least he has a simian pal to keep him company! Maybe Funky Winkerbean is just going to pivot to being a wacky strip about a happy-go-lucky Stalinist and his drunken chimp roommate, and I cannot emphasize enough how much of an improvement that would be.

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Pajama Diaries, 7/16/19

I freely admit that it’s entirely irrational, but I’ve developed an extreme aversion to the strips where Pajama Diaries gets horny. Like, it’s not Luann-level distasteful, of course, but it still squicks me out, possibly because nobody actually talks like this. “Hey mom, be sure to make me a special second dinner for tonight, because after my dinner date I’m gonna go fuck somewhere, then come home later and eat that second dinner, because if there’s one thing having sex does it makes you hungry, right? Post-sex hunger is a thing? Because of all the sex exercise? This is exactly how I talk to my friends in my dorm, and I’ve definitely had sex before.”

Funky Winkerbean, 7/16/19

I dunno, man, in this flashback Young Cliff Anger looks less like a guy whose best friend just went to jail for a murder he didn’t commit and more like a guy who’s pretty jazzed to be the new owner of a chimpanzee named Zanzibar. Ha ha, the chimp is smoking a cigar and wearing a shirt! He thinks he’s people! Anyway, if Zanzibar turns out to be the real killer in this storyline, I’m willing to forgive a lot about the past few weeks in this strip.

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Mary Worth, 7/15/19

Oh wow, it looks like the extremely terrible trend of “negging” has finally hit France, or maybe Hugo has learned it as part of his cultural studies here in America, but either way he’s taking it to the next level by negging not just Dawn’s appearance or personality (seems like there’d be a lot of rich material with that one in particular) but her whole country. Which, yeah, we have a lot to answer for, especially when it comes to culinary matters, but I think you lose your right to talk smack about how and what other people eat and drink when you’re in the middle of eating a sandwich with a fork.

Hi and Lois, 7/15/19

Ha ha, kids today and their Wi-Fi, amiright everybody? Anyway, feel free to speculate how long Chip has been isolating himself socially and refusing to leave his room that he’s forgotten that his wireless connectivity ends when he leaves the house.

Dick Tracy, 7/15/19

Well, it’s Monday and it’s time for a new Dick Tracy storyline, and this one starts with … Dick being gunned down in the pouring rain right outside his precinct? That’s pretty solid, actually, though it’s honestly weird to see it so soon in the week, as it’ll be pretty hard to top.