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Crock, 5/23/18

A “favorite” joke format in Crock is “the troopers are getting so young,” which I guess is supposed to just be about how when you get older people come into the workforce who are themselves adults but who seem like children to you because the age gap between them and you is so big, but has the (I hope) unintentional effect of implying that France, beset by manpower shortages in its horrific and failing colonial war in the Maghreb, has been forced to deploy child soldiers. Fortunately, since e-mail has been a widespread and indeed in some contexts primary means of communication for 20 years, today’s strip is here to let us know that the Legion is now fully manned with adult recruits of prime military age.

Shoe, 5/23/18

“You know, Foster’s has a really effective advertising campaign in the States as ‘Australian for beer,’ but in fact it’s not particularly popular in Australia. No, my parents were really into beers like Carlton Draught and Tooheys New.”

“Is Foster’s a kind of beer? I was saying that the state put you in a foster home, because your parents were drunks.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/23/18

“I dug up his grave in th’ dead of night, cracked open his coffin, and cut off his beard for Jughaid t’ wear. He’s frownin’ on account of th’ smell!”

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Mark Trail, 5/22/18

Wow, Rusty sure looks mournful in that last panel, doesn’t he. “Yeah … he does that kind of stuff. Pushing whales back into the ocean, I mean, instead of leaving them on the beach where certain kids had lured them because they had planned to spell out ‘I THINK YOU’RE NEAT, MARA’ in 20-foot-tall letters made of strips of rotting blubber on the sand. He’s, uh, [suppresses a sob] pretty cool like that.”

Crankshaft, 5/22/18

One of the less fun running jokes in Crankshaft is about how Lena, Crankshaft’s wholly pleasant co-worker, is held in cruel contempt by everyone she works with for no discernable reason. You’ve probably enjoyed the fun stylings of “Lena is belittled for her failures as a bowler,” and so now buckle in for “Lena is belittled for her failures as a golfer,” which is exactly the same as the bowling thing except somehow even less interesting.

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Dick Tracy, 5/21/18

Diet Smith has long had a cozy relationship with the Neo-Chicago police force that amounts to a local microcosm of the military-industrial complex. This has become more obvious as the decades have worn on: what used to be gee-whiz futuristic high-tech, like tiny wrist-sized communicators, are now available as commodity hardware manufactured in China, so presumably only the kickbacks Smith Industries sends to City Hall and the Police Benevolent Association keeps him in business. But even when this strip started running in the 1930s you could just buy a gas mask from any speciality store. It can’t be worth Diet’s efforts to actually manufacture the things, so I assume he’s just buying them in bulk, selling them to the cops at insane markups, and setting up some kind of branding program where the cops are contractually obligated to announce his name during police raids as a final insult.

Mary Worth, 5/21/18

For fans of Wilbur channeling Sally Field yesterday, good news: he has not yet begun to self-actualize. A little good luck and a single hour of therapy behind him and Wilbur has swung from cliffside drunk depression to manic glee, and in today’s second panel appears to be transforming into some kind of superhero whose main power is wholly unjustified self-esteem.

Mark Trail, 5/21/18

GUYS SHE’S RIGHT THERE, LIKE FIVE FEET AWAY, JUST BECAUSE SHE’S NOT MAKING EYE CONTACT DOESN’T MEAN SHE CAN’T HEAR YOU