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The Lockhorns, 8/18/17

While the Lockhorns occasionally demonstrate the strong emotions you might expect from a couple trapped in an endless, awful hell-marriage between two people who hate each other, more often their faces display only the icy, indifferent numbness that you might expect from people who try their best not to feel anything at all. Today’s panel is particularly grim in that regard: Leroy is of course unfazed as the house fills with thick, choking black smoke and his and Loretta’s murder-suicide pact finally goes into operation, but his friend, who appears to have dropped by to visit at exactly the wrong time, seems only mildly more concerned. I’m not sure if this is because the Lockhorns put out a force-field of ennui that snuffs out the energy of hapless passers-by, or if it’s just a result of carbon monoxide drowsiness.

Crankshaft, 8/18/17

Crankshaft looks a lot more proud and determined than usual in this panel. “That’s right,” he thinks. “We live in a world where an abundance-based economy is possible and nobody needs to go hungry. The hoarders and wreckers of the parastic food industry will have their plans ruined and capitalism itself will be shaken, by the power of my zucchini!”

Mary Worth, 8/18/17

Mary Worth is many, many delightful things, but one thing it is generally not is subtle about the future direction of its plotlines, and keeping that in mind I want to point out that the name of the fancy restaurant where this handsome divorced fortysomething doctor took a college-aged hospital admin temp on a date is French for “THE LOVE DOG.”

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Mary Worth, 8/17/17

Dawn is too young to legally drink alcohol, of course, but it’s nice of this fancy restaurant to pour her Diet Coke into a wine glass for her, to help her feel like a big girl. She’s adulting!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/17/17

I feel like a lot of people have seen the distinctive costumes from the The Handmaid’s Tale in posters and commercials and such and absorbed it as a pop cultural artifact without actually having watched the show or read the book, and, like … do you think they know it’s about state-sanctioned ceremonial rape, or what.

Beetle Bailey, 8/17/17

Today’s Beetle Bailey seems pretty strange if you take it literally, what with the awesome power and responsibility held by a general staff officer in the U.S. military, but it begins to make a lot more sense if you imagine that “this job” refers to, oh, just to take a profession totally at random, cartooning.

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Gil Thorp, 8/16/17

OK, see, when it comes to my nostalgia-fueled love of returning former Gil Thorp teens who are now All Grown Up, even I have my limits. Like, Trey and Jaquan, a couple of guys who hadn’t appeared in more than a decade? I’m jazzed as hell, man! But True Standish, the star quarterback who graduated last year? Ennnnnnh. Under True’s steady hand, the ranking of the Wake Forest Demon Deacons offense apparently dropped from 114th in the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision to 124th, but at least this summer when he crushes his receiver’s hopes and dreams, it’ll be the outcome everyone’s rooting for.

Mark Trail, 8/16/17

Oh, hey, remember when Johnny straight-up rode over a cliff on his horse? Well, surprise, that was just some fancy illusion work from Mark’s old buddy, and he’s not dead at all! Unfortunately, back two months ago (side note: Mark and this motley crew have been out on the Dakota prairie for two months??? Jesus) when Mark and Johnny plotted to use Johnny’s trick riding skills to defeat their enemies, they were still under the impression that the she-kidnapper was a hostage (despite Mark’s big talk about knowing all along she was on the side of evil), so probably Johnny is about to chivalrously ride to her rescue, with disastrous results.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/16/17

You know, some people view me with pity just because I somehow retain huge swaths of plot and character detail for Mary Worth or Gil Thorp in my head, but in my defense those plots and characters are, for the most part, fun. Take Funky Winkerbean in contrast: despite the fact that I’ve read it and been annoyed by it every day for more than a decade, I routinely forgot a lot of its byzantine world-building, because honestly why bother. So, like, for instance, up until today I would’ve sworn that Darrin’s pal/coworker Mopey Pete was another one of the strip’s seemingly endless supply of clinically depressed Northeast Ohio natives, but nope, I guess he’s a “New York and L.A. guy,” a proud bicoastal elitist who nevertheless dresses like that. Anyway, I’m sure he’ll find something that interests him in Centerville! Probably a lady, for sex.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/16/17

Sorry, gag-a-day strip writers: no so-called “punchline” you could come up with would be funnier than panel three of today’s Rex Morgan, M.D., in which we see the gears of June’s mind spinning wildly in her attempt to avoid the responsibility of raising her dying childhood friend’s toddler.