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Gil Thorp, 4/11/18

Well, it was bound to happen: the Social Justice Teens are feeling kind of bad about defeating Marty by goading him into cussing on-air. You’d think they’d take the attitude of “Yay, the sports radio guy who literally nobody liked even before we found out he was a racist isn’t going to be saying rude things about our friends on-air anymore!” But these kids sense, at the periphery of their minds, that they are in fact the current protagonists in an ongoing narrative; and while in real life we actually enjoy getting what we want, within a story a protagonist without an antagonist is dull and lifeless, and they know it.

Mary Worth, 4/11/18

Mary Worth, obviously, doesn’t feel itself restricted by such conventional narrative niceties. Sure, the current storyline of Wilbur’s mid-grade ennui appears to lack dramatic tension, drifting as it is from a little shower singin’ to some light shoe purchasing. But in fact the true interest to the reader is the nature of the story itself: is something actually going to happen one of these days? Or when we picture the future, should we imagine Wilbur thought-ballooning while shopping at various chain stores, forever?

Family Circus, 4/11/18

Generally speaking the circumstances in which you’d eat off a tray like this are that you’re eating dinner in front of the TV, which is literally every child’s fondest wish, so it seems weird that Billy is so outraged here. The prissy face really sells it, though. “Mother, not only are we watching televised entertainment rather than earnestly discussing our day over dinner, but the lack of a table means that there are no arbitrary rules of etiquette to enforce! This is sheer anarchy! Also, I dropped a lot of whatever this green goop is on the rug.”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/10/18

It’s true, Jughaid: in the world most of us take for granted, the individual has been empowered by civil society and the modern state, which has a direct relationship with its citizens. But you live in Hootin’ Holler, where those institutions are barely perceptible, and instead everyone’s lives are circumscribed by bonds of blood, with extended families being the primary forms of identification and arbiters of power. It’s not clear whether Snuffy’s nephew made friends with someone from a hostile clan, wandered into hostile territory, or violated some other taboo, but swift Smif justice has descended upon him and reminded him that his own desires ought to be subordinated to the agenda of his kinship group.

Mary Worth, 4/10/18

Congratulations to panel two of Mary Worth for offering the most incredibly specific foot fetish imagery on the Internet. Boy, it’s really too bad you can’t smell something through your web browser, huh?

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/9/18

Boy, our POV sure is lingering kind of ominously on that paper cup of water in the last panel, and you know what would be extremely funny, to me? If, after we spent all this time learning that Justin’s reluctance to seek medical attention for what was obviously a serious health problem had its origins in his mother’s own irrational fears, Rex hands Justin that water and he drinks it and then the water just leaks out everywhere because the terrible, substandard surgery performed on him at the bottom-tier hospital where Rex has admitting privileges has left the poor boy’s digestive tract full of holes. “My mother … was right!” Justin would gasp out, right before he dies from all his organs becoming unmoored from the places where they’re supposed to be.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/9/18

I believe I’ve shared on this blog before the fact that in sixth grade I accidentally spilled a pot of boiling Lipton’s Giggle Noodle Soup onto my foot. This was an extremely silly-sounding injury that earned me the derisive nickname “Noodlefoot” for the remainder of the school year, but it was also an extremely painful second-degree burn that I had to keep dressed in a bandage for months! I still have visible scars, more than thirty years later! My point is that while Hagar and Lucky Eddie are yucking it up there on the battlements of whatever castle they’ve managed to seize by brutal force to use as a temporary base for yet another plundering expedition, the men below are screaming in pain as their flesh sizzles and sloughs from their bones.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/9/18

Ha ha, it’s funny because, even in moments of quotidian happiness, Cindy is obsessed with with her age and the decline of her good looks! Cindy, you might recall, was the pretty cheerleader character from the high-school-days origins of Funky Winkerbean, and the strip has never stopped punishing her for it, having her fired from her newscasting job for getting old, after which she didn’t file the obvious lawsuit, but instead started both working and sleeping with young people so she would always be reminded of her encroaching cronedom. The Funkyverse is all about generalized anxiety over mortality, of course, but you have to love the way Cindy’s been saddled with a particularly gendered version of this where she’s constantly convinced that she’ll be unattractive and unloveable any day now, and by “have to love” I mean “you don’t have to love it at all, feel free to get pretty upset about it, actually.”

Mark Trail, 4/9/18

I’m pretty sure that Marlin and Jim drove up in that jeep, so, unlike what happened with a couple of boats we could mention, this is one hilariously awesome vehicle wreck that won’t go on Woods and Wildlife’s tab!