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Josh is cranky on Thursday

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Blondie, 2/21/19

As with most legacy comics, there are many strips in Blondie where the underlying vibe is that the kids today suck, but in today’s installment that seems to have become the “joke” itself. Millennials! You give them a promotion and they just want to party, with your money!!! Thank god the computer nerds will soon replace them all with robots, amiright??? It’s absolutely wild that Dagwood, for whom napping on the job is literally a solid 25% of shtick, is looking gobsmacked at the reader with a “can you believe it?” facial expression in the final panel.

Marvin, 2/21/19

So, yes, we’ve been having fun with the visual joke of “a fire hydrant is the dog equivalent of a toilet!” for, I dunno, probably the better part of a century, but … we all know that when dogs pee on things, they do it from, like, several inches away, right? They don’t touch the thing they pee on? So it doesn’t matter how cold the thing is? I know this is a weird question for Marvin, the most piss-obsessed strip there is, but: has anyone involved in the production of this comic actually seen a dog pee?

Pluggers, 2/21/19

Pluggers’ cars break down all the time, and they don’t have any actual friends.

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Even in her grief, Kadia’s like “Jumpsuit dude over here? Nah”

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The Phantom, 2/20/19

You know, usually it’s easy being a supposedly immortal jungle ghost who’s actually a series of dudes handing down a spandex suit over the centuries, in that when do you heroic stuff everyone really appreciates it and when you don’t do it, it’s not like most people 100% believe in you anyway, so they don’t get mad and think “Why did the Man Who Cannot Die let my beloved grandma get eaten by a tiger?” or whatever. Being able to pick and choose your battles is key to the vigilante game! Unfortunately, the danger zone in the Phantom life cycle comes when the kids you’ve had to perpetuate the whole scheme are old enough to understand your heroic mission but not old enough to get the nuances and practicalities, and end up trying get you to go save everybody. Once the Bandar finally perfect that immortality medicine, this isn’t going to be a problem, but in the meantime the Ghost-Who-Would-Rather-Not-On-This-One is about to find himself in a real pickle!

Mary Worth, 2/20/19

Excited as I am about this Older Adult Online Dating plot, I do need to point out that it’s problematic that we’re shifting storylines without an intervening Charterstone Pool Party. But I’m hoping that we will get one, and that Estelle plans to invite all of her potential paramours (clockwise from top left: Skinny Ian Cameron, Wilbur Weston But Not Clinically Depressed, Guy Who Seems Nice But Starts Letting Slip Racist Remarks On Date Three, Dude Who’s Into Fun Outdoor Activities And Is Also A Swinger It Turns Out, and Street Magician) to the poolside soirée so that Mary can help her choose!

Rhymes With Orange, 2/20/19

Squirting water … out his butthole? Because that’s what the gut is attached to? The butthole? This is a comic about a doctor who just got sprayed in the face by a stream of water out a clown’s anus? I guess?

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Mark’s chitinous exoskeleton will definitely come in handy here

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Mark Trail, 2/19/19

Hell yeah everyone, the seemingly eternal Mexican vacation is over and Chris “Dirty” Dyer is back and ready for revenge! “Dirty” was last seen lounging erotically on a beach somewhere almost a year ago in between bouts of knife-thorwing practice, and by all means follow that link for a bunch of other links that explain who he is and what his beef is with Mark, but the important thing is that “Dirty” has given up on knives and moved on to flamethrowers, and is now using one to melt what appears to be a simulation of Mark Trail, only blonde, and made out of … candle wax, maybe? Or plastic? A plastic mannequin devoid of emotions and genitals, much like Mark himself? Anyway, I hope this presages the final conflict between Mark and “Dirty”, but probably this glimpse is supposed to tide us over while we endure another 10 months of Mark writing a story about [spins wheel] endangered frogs and getting mixed up in a [spins wheel again] insurance fraud scheme.

Mary Worth, 2/19/19

Hell yeah once again everyone, the seemingly eternal Ian-Jannie plot is over and now Mary is back and gonna get her friend Estelle laid! Not sure what this bodes for Libby, who Mary only fobbed off on Estelle because she missed her dead husband, but we’ll deal with that when we need to! The important thing is that Estelle “miss[es] having a man around,” if you know what she means (she means sex). If fortysomething Iris can bed a 23-year-old millionaire, elegant Blythe Danner lookalike Estelle should at least be able to woo a 45-year-old with a steady job and health insurance.

Gil Thorp, 2/19/19

An interesting contrast between the public and private sectors here! It looks like yet another concerned citizen — the real customers of the Milford school district — has come to the conclusion that Gil Thorp sucks, but since Gil and everyone else at the school have cushy union jobs, they don’t have to respect anyone else’s opinion or even try to stop sucking! Meanwhile, in the cut-throat, free market world of sports radio focusing exclusively on high schools, B/Robby has already shown he can beat Marty Moon at the metrics the station owners care about, so he’s about to climb the corporate latter at Marty’s expense. The system works!