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Beetle Bailey, 9/10/18

General Halftrack is of course old, feeble, and slow-moving, so it had to be pure surprise that allowed him to land a sharp, shattering blow to Sarge’s face. You can still see the shock in Sarge’s eyes. Usually he’s the one who dishes out disfiguring physical punishment to the soldiers under his command in flagrant violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, not the other way around.

Gasoline Alley, 9/10/18

Gasoline Alley is in the midst of rambling bit where a bunch of hundred-year-old cartoon characters are discussing their inability to make jokes that people would enjoy, which seems a little on the nose to me.

Mary Worth, 9/10/18

“Oh no! Mr. Wynter’s beloved dog, his only companion, has died, which may force him to finally open up to social overtures and make new friends? What a completely unexpected development!” said Mary, watering her freshly planted bed of extremely poisonous plants.

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Mark Trail, 9/9/18

Remember a few years back when Mark’s ranger pal discovered some miscreants growing pot on government land, which led to an adventure at the conclusion of which Mark bludgeoned one marijuana grower with a stick and set a vicious dog on another, then left them to die of exposure and warned Rusty that some of his little friends were probably drug fiends, too? Anyway, now it’s 2018 and in lots of places weed is basically legal, which probably really cheeses Mark off, and so he’s bringing out the big guns: sure marijuana is a relatively mild intoxicant whose effects carry no more health or social risk than wholly legal alcohol, but did you know that it’s a danger to these adorable furry critters???? Remember, when large-scale industrial agriculture intrudes on natural habitat, the main thing to focus on is what’s being grown on those farms. Think before you toke, hippies!

Beetle Bailey, 9/9/18

Golf is of course beloved by people of a certain age and social position in the United States, and the fact that those positions have traditionally overlapped with newspaper comics creators has been well reflected in the strips. Still, times are changing, and I guess I have to grudgingly respect that Beetle Bailey recognizes this and has chosen to make a well-reasoned case for the game in the marketplace of ideas rather than just assuming that everyone immediately sees its charms.

Marvin, 9/9/18

Marvin, meanwhile, just uses golf as an excuse for a terrible bit of wordplay that honestly could’ve run in a three-panel daily strip but has been inflicted on us on this, the Lord’s day, in what is surely a sin deserving of eternal damnation.

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Crock, 9/8/18

As I have repeatedly promised, I will continue to produce this blog until the day I die, but one of my big fears is that as I get older the blog will transition away from “Ha ha, here is some trenchant commentary on newspaper comics, and how they relate to society as a whole” and towards “Help! I don’t understand today’s Crock!” But ………. guys, I don’t understand today’s Crock. I’m sort of hung up on Grossie’s facial expression in panel one. Normally I’d interpret “going to have number four” as, like, she was pregnant with a fourth child, but Grossie’s face is marked by a certain cruel glee that seems wildly misplaced even to me, a committed childfree coastal elitist. Like, it should be a well-known term for a type of plastic surgery to match her expression, you know? I basically feel like Otis has gotten the exactly correct sense of things from context clues and shouldn’t be the butt of the joke here.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/8/18

The death of any human being is of course a tragedy, but if a woman passing peacefully, surrounded by her family, after a good, long life well-lived is the price that needed to be paid to end the Hanks’ endless nationwide tour of dumb roadside attractions, I think it was worth it.