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Blondie, 3/15/19

How old do you think Dagwood Bumstead is? In one sense, he was born already an adult when the comic strip Blondie debuted in 1930 and is thus somewhere in his 110s, older than just about any adult alive and reading about his day-to-day antics is; but in another sense, he has two teenage children and is of working age in the year 2019, so he’s probably no older than his mid 50s and could be as young as his late 30s. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, despite the fact that all of us have only known Dagwood as an adult our whole lives and therefore think of him as “older than us,” the word “dope” has been used as a positive adjective in the sense depicted here for nearly 40 years! C’mon, man.

Mary Worth, 3/15/19

You ever notice that we’d never seen Mary’s “old friend” Estelle until she foisted Libby onto her because she realized that she couldn’t continue to play whatever cruel long-running emotional game she’s playing with Dr. Jeff if he couldn’t hang out at her apartment? She’d never spent time with Estelle socially before and I’m pretty sure she only drops by her apartment now so she can get some Libby time in. If Estelle were explaining in rapturous detail that all Arthur needs to wrap up his construction job in Malaysia was her social security number and a certified copy of her birth certificate, Mary would just mutter “I’m happy for you, my friend!” while getting just enough cat dander on her clothes to keep Jeff off-balance the next time he comes to visit.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/14/19

For a long time, one of my literary pet peeves was when someone spells “trooper” the way panel one does here; in the sense of the phrase as Rex means it, it’s supposed to be “trouper,” as in an acting troupe, and the implication is supposed to be more of an actor’s “the show must go on come what may” than soldierly doggedness. But it’s something I’ve eased up on of late, given that troupe and troop are doublets, the same French word borrowed into English twice three centuries apart, and anyway it’s not like the two senses are that far apart. Anyway, I think we can all agree that throughout this process, Brayden has shown neither a warrior’s courage nor a performer’s flair, so he deserves neither spelling.

Six Chix, 3/14/19

Do you suppose the diagonal squiggly line down the middle of this is supposed to be a panel marker, indicating that our protagonist is devouring all of this stale candy minutes after her dialogue, or the edge of a thought bubble, indicating that she fantasizes doing the same? Either way, I think I think it falls short of the set-up’s potential: we should see her dumping all this chocolate down her gullet right in front of her interlocutors, and we would rightly laud her as a hero for it.

Dennis the Menace, 3/14/19

Mr. Wilson alone dares to speak the shocking truth of the comic-strip reality all of these characters share: no matter how much time passes, they will never age or change, their essential Dennis-ness and Alice-ness and Mr. Wilson-ness and so on set in stone forever. Notice that they don’t even bother putting candles on Dennis’s cake. Dennis … will always be Dennis.

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/13/19

The first two days of this week’s Funky Winkerbean teased us with “Holly’s gonna drop some bad news on Funky over the phone,” and this being Funky Winkerbean the smart money would’ve been on “somebody’s dying.” Instead, it’s just “your mother-in-law, of whom neither of us is particularly fond, is going to live with us, forever,” which is honestly one of the best case scenarios here. But I do like the rollercoaster of emotion Funky is going through> Look at him smiling in panel one, even though, as noted, he has been warned that non-good news is at some point in this conversation going to be delivered! Like he hears “We don’t have to drive my mother back from Florida” and thinks “That’s great! We’ve already established that she’s an old lady incapable of driving herself and we’re her only family, so I’m not sure how she’s getting back there — maybe she’ll ride the rails, like a hobo? — but that sure takes a load off my mind. Things are only looking up today!”

Mark Trail, 3/13/19

Oh, whew, Cherry’s dad was briefly at risk of experiencing emotional growth by allowing himself to mourn his friend, but then he realized that talking, or thinking, about feelings isn’t what men do! What men do is talk and think about mysterious bearded strangers who blow into town with tall tales of magical Native American gold mines. At some point we’re presumably going to discover that the real magical gold mine was the friends we made along the way, and that’s all the healing that Doc is going to need.