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Spider-Man, 5/30/18

If you’re going to have entire cinematic universe of stories dedicated to superheroes whose intellectual property rights are held by a specific #brand, I think one of the things that would be good to explore is how the media covers super-combat for the benefit of their mostly non-super-powered readership. Ideally, as I’ve noted before in this space, this exploration would take the form of a Netflix series called Bugle, of which I would be the executive producer, featuring a ragtag group of underpaid twentysomething reporters and bloggers whose lives are made miserable by their overbearing skinflint boss J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons, who we can hopefully get under contract to do at least six episodes a season) who occasionally yells at them to get more pictures of the Shocker up on the Bugle’s Snapchat or whatever. The big question, of course, would be how you’d do this without Peter Parker, who’s the best known Bugle employee but whose teen MCU arc doesn’t seem like it’d intersect with life as a stringer photographer anytime soon. My solution: there’s one episode where they use some of the blurry Spidey pics he’s posted to Twitter and promise to give him “exposure” and hint that maybe they’ll start paying him somewhere down the line, but when he can’t come up with pics of any other superheroes, they stop responding to his emails. You can’t afford to specialize in just one superhero and expect to get paid! It’s the era of doing more with less, journalism-wise! Get with the program, Peter!

Mary Worth, 5/30/18

I’m a guy who like karaoke, but I’m willing to say that a big part of its appeal is the you’re all in it together, you know? Like, if Wilbur is going to belting out Luke Bryan’s oeuvre, as a reward he should get to see Toby dancing “sexily” while she breathily makes her way through Ke$ha’s “Die Young,” or a stone-faced and extremely sober rendition of “Riders of the Storm” from Ian.

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Mark Trail, 5/29/18

“That must be why she likes your son, who certainly isn’t human, and probably isn’t a plant or a fungus. Not sure about that last possibility, though, I’m not a scientist!”

Beetle Bailey, 5/29/18

I love Cookie’s expression of hooded-eyed satisfaction in the second panel. “Heh heh, at last, years of having a bookshelf full of books I never open has paid off, as I finally got to unleash that absolutely sick bit of wordplay I’ve been saving up for just this moment.”

Mary Worth, 5/29/18

This will almost certainly turn out to be a parade of nobodies brought in to sing Wilbur’s praises, but it would be really funny, to me, if they’re just planning on luring him to a third location where they can execute him, gangland-style.

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Beetle Bailey, 5/28/18

The character design in Beetle Bailey is extremely stylized, which is actually fine and not anything to complain about, it’s a cartoon, for Pete’s sake, though I will say that if anything a little too much attention is generally lavished on the ears. I mean, why draw the head as a basic oval but then spend a lot of time getting the details of all the little cartilage nubs inside the earlobe correct? Why make two characters where the distinguishing feature between them is that one of them has cauliflower ears? I guess it’s all been leading to this moment, this moment when an amiable, popular, long-running newspaper comic strip takes a sudden and nauseating left turn straight into nightmarish body horror.

Hi and Lois, 5/28/18

I guess that’s supposed to be the Flagstons’ occasionally glimpsed elderly neighbor at the lower right there, but since Memorial Day is of course as we all know a holiday set aside to remember those who died while serving in the armed forces, and the day where we honor the living for their service is called Veteran’s Day and is in November, I choose to believe that that’s actually a ghost, sadly watching these civilians enjoying their three-day weekend and not remembering the reason for the season, which is to say him. That explains why he’s standing in the yard but nobody seems to notice him, and why his words are depicted in a thought balloon (ghosts cannot be heard by the living, obviously). “Ah ha,” you’re saying, “But Josh, why is he old? We don’t as a rule send the elderly off to die in wars!” Well, jokes on you, buddy: your assumption that we live on eternally young in the afterlife is obviously flawed. This guy probably died in Korea or Vietnam in his 20s and his spectre continued to age, much to his horror. “Maybe if I can will these living souls into remembering me, that will keep me young,” he thinks. Sorry, soldier! That’s not how the universe works, apparently! Enjoy growing older and older, forever!

Dick Tracy, 5/28/18

I’ve lived in California for close to four years now, and I gotta say: palm trees? Hot tubs? Attractive women of varying ethnicities? 58 counties, representing a uniquely powerful form of local government, often weilding more influence over our day-to-day lives than the administrations of our better-known cities? You sure have the “west coast lifestyle” pegged, Dick Tracy!