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Hi and Lois, 9/19/19

I don’t know why Lois even has an elaborate, frilly apron that seems like it wouldn’t be much practical use for protecting your clothes from cooking splashes and is probably from some catalog dedicated to eroticized maidwear … actually, scratch that, I know exactly why she has it: it’s for sex play, and she obviously deploys it on the regular when she watches the Donna Reed Show and gets hornt up, and, you know, good for her, BUT: Hi has clearly suffered some kind of vicious beating on his way home from work, with his suit badly damaged and his eyes wide and unfocused due to shock or maybe a concussion. This is no time for love, Lois! Read the room!

Gil Thorp, 9/19/19

Hey, remember this past summer, when we revisited a former high school athletic superstar who also liked books and learning, like a damn nerd? Well, welcome to this year’s football plot, where the star running back likes quiet evenings at home reading books, like a damn nerd. He likes books more than sex even. What madness is this?

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Shoe, 9/18/19

So many Shoe punchlines are met by goggle eyes of horror, and honestly there’s plenty of justification for that, but I really like the expression Roz is wearing here, which is sort of a grim, sly smile. “That’s right,” she’s thinking. “Marci went to Las Vegas with her man and they totally had sex. Procreative sex.”

Gasoline Alley, 9/18/19

In a development somehow even more baffling than the weeks and weeks and weeks Gasoline Alley spent on scrapbooking, Gasoline Alley has decided to spend God knows how many weeks discussing the very real and fascinating condition of synesthesia by focusing on a new character, a physician’s assistant who claims his synesthesia allows him to feel his patients’ ailments, which isn’t even close to being a real thing. Still, if it’s an avenue for this strip to get into some “the HUMAN MIND is the ultimate trip, baby” visual territory like it is today, I’m willing to forgive a lot.

Mark Trail, 9/18/19

“Kathmandu isn’t the primitive, out-of-date city the world thinks it is! Is it still a little naive? Possibly. Has the mayor been convinced to pay a substantial portion of the annual budget to promote the city’s modernity in what he’s been assured is a widely read and universally beloved American comic strip? Well, yes. But ‘primitive’? Definitely not!”

Pluggers, 9/18/19

The primary facts you need to know about a plugger’s family members in order to keep abreast of their lives are the various ways in which their aged and ill-treated bodies are falling apart.

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Six Chix, 9/17/19

I want to pass over the actual joke at the core of today’s Six Chix (ha ha, moms sure love wine, amiright) and actually get into the visual shorthand being deployed here to establish that this is, in fact, a high-powered businessman, which, no matter what else I say about it, I have to admit that it worked, because we can all agree this is supposed to be a high-powered businessman, right? Anyway, our high-powered businessman is wearing a grey suit, obviously; he’s also wearing what appears to be a backpack with that suit, which more and more people are doing nowadays, but he’s also carrying a briefcase, because that’s a more universal high-powered businessman signifier, I guess. He’s also heading down into the subway, to establish he’s in New York City, the Big Apple, the nexus of all high-powered businessman energy (I will refrain from going on at great insufferable length about how the A, D, F, 1, 3, and 6 lines do not intersect anywhere). Finally, he’s yelling into his phone, which is a thing that high-powered businessmen do, the way they get things done. Who exactly is he ordering wine from? Is this a thing you can do in New York: order wine, over the phone? I’m definitely not high-powered enough to know!

(UPDATE: I 100% read the old woman in the background as just walking by on the sidewalk, which I think is fair given that her body language is not that different from the other dude on the sidewalk, and she was small because she’s a little further away, but I think commenters are right that she’s supposed to be the mother in question and … tiny? And strapped to his back? Like a …baby would be? Jesus, this fucking strip.)

Family Circus, 9/17/19

This isn’t just another Dolly malapropism, folks: PJ’s a robot! The older Keane Kids are biological units, but, I think we can all agree, those experiments were failures. PJ’s the next generation: cleaner, more efficient. He’s the future.