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Crankshaft, 12/6/17

Every year Crankshaft takes a job as a mall Santa, and every year he’s a sullen dick about it, like he always is about everything. This year the mall closed down, though, and Crankshaft felt bad about that, presumably because he missed being cruel to children. Now it appears Lillian has hired him to play Santa in the unlicensed book store she runs over her garage, which as far as I know has never had a customer, so I guess she just wants him to sit there scowling in the suit all day while she putters around, which I dearly hope is not a sex thing.

Mary Worth, 12/6/17

“I just made a very expensive purchase and our entertainment budget is a bit crimped at the moment. On a completely unrelated note, what would you say the resale value of, just to pick something at random, all of our kitchen appliances would be?”

Funky Winkerbean, 12/6/17

I bet when you give this tour in Memphis, when you get to this part you have old white people loudly finishing your sentences for you and trying to change the subject a lot.

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Mark Trail, 12/5/17

I for one am extremely excited for Mark Trail to finally become the full-on avant garde art project we’ve always imagined it to be. When the one-eyed man and his companion, a gentleman with a blue suit and pocket square who’s cosplaying a mid-level Ancient Egyptian official from the 19th Dynasty from the neck up, encounter a wizened old clown who just screams and screams, American newspaper readers will experience the mingled terror, confusion, alienation, and catharsis formerly available only to highbrow types seeing radical theater produced in big cities.

Family Circus, 12/5/17

I have to admit that I genuinely laughed out loud at Jeffy’s smug facial expression here. “Eh?” he’s saying. “Breakdown of traditional gender roles? Eh? Eh?”

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Spider-Man, 12/4/17

Guys, I’m gonna be blunt: I don’t think the Newspaper Spider-Man comic strip has a real solid sense of how “science” works. Like, I’m no biologist with a speciality in limbs myself, but I imagine Dr. Connors would be analyzing the genetic mechanisms that control limb regrowth in species like geckos, or maybe studying how limbs grow in embryos, say, then forming hypotheses about how those processes could be reproduced in an adult human. But, no, he apparently just brought a big cardboard box of bottles out to his swamp-lab. “One of them will help restore my lost arm! Vinegar? Liquid-Plumr? Pesto? I won’t stop guzzling down whatever’s in these bottles until my arm grows back!”

Blondie, 12/4/17

As we all know, Dagwood and Blondie spend most of their time sitting in the same room facing away from each other. They’re doing a little experiment to try to restore some emotional intimacy to their everyday lives by sharing the same piece of furniture, and it is not going well.

Dick Tracy, 12/4/17

We’re launching into a new Dick Tracy storyline this week, and it begins with Sam and Dick grousing about how they’re always at the beck and call of Diet Smith, wealthy inventor and supplier of cool cop gear, just because he’s rich. Sure, it’s fun to be a policeman and decide who lives and who dies, but our heroes are getting sick of being tools of capital. But will there still be a need for brutal police violence after the revolution? Don’t worry, boys: according to all of human history, yes!

Dennis the Menace, 12/4/17

Is this even … is there some menace happening here? This is just Henry leering at cheerleaders on TV. Not really sure if he’s watching Bring It On or the College Cheerleading Championship on ESPN, but the point is that daddy’s horny and Dennis knows it and he’s telling his mom about it. I guess the real question is, is there anything that isn’t menacing happening here? Even Ruff looks to be in a heightened state of unnatural arousal.