9 Chickweed Lane: I can tell from your salute.

I've been strongly considering saying nice things about the recent strips in this extremely long 9 Chickweed Lane storyline, which have greatly improved upon and even partially redeemed some of the more problematic strips from early in the story. But that will have to wait, because when Brooke McEldowney wanted to use a flashback to depict Edie fondly reminiscing about Bill in the midst of struggling to decide who to marry, McEldowney decided to go with the fucking hard-on joke.

This is not the first time he has made an odd artistic choice that undermined the dramatic momentum he had been building, and it probably won't be the last.