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The Phantom, 7/30/26

The question of how an elected civilian government can keep control of its own security services is as old as democracy itself, and you have to imagine the issue is a delicate one in Bangalla, a relatively young post-colonial republic where the main paramilitary answers to a dude who lives in a cave and has much of the country believing he’s a ghost. Still, President Luaga is doing his best, letting the Ghost Who Could Probably Do A Coup If He Wanted know that he’s very disappointed about this whole “leave a supervillain in an open-air cage for years where it would be very easy for drones to free him” situation by glowering meaningfully during a Zoom call.

Six Chix, 7/30/26

Now, I’m not a doctor, but I am a comics blogger with literally decades of experience, and I can tell you that in both these scenarios that guy has Xes for eyes, which means he’s dead. Dead! Don’t worry, doctors, you don’t need to trouble yourselves, go about your business.

Gearhead Gertie, 7/30/26

I was going to do a joke about how all this time Gertie has yearned to be part of a throuple, and that the “3” t-shirts she wears constantly aren’t just about Dale Earnhardt, but I’m sorry, my heart’s not in it. Look at her face, free of any hint of guile or eroticism. She simply has done the minimum amount of mental processing necessary to respond — “husband not happy with wife? solution: husband get new wife” — while 99% of her brainpower continues to focus on watching and thinking about NASCAR, as per usual.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/30/26

The scam twins have decided to avenge their Uncle Rene by scamming the Morgans, despite the fact that he specifically told them not to, and have been staking out the Morgan house in order to plan their next scam move. Mainly what they’ve learned is that the Morgans are incredibly boring, which, no shit! Have you noticed that they’re barely in their own comic anymore? That’s because they’re even less interesting than whatever Buck or Auggie or Mud Mountain Murphy are up to. Do you know how uninteresting you have to be to make that happen?

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Crankshaft, 7/24/26

Boy, these multiverse stories sure get complicated! Like when Barry Allen Flash teamed up in the past with Jay Garrick Flash to battle The Thinker, The Fiddler, and Shade so Barry could persuade real-world writer Gardner Fox to write a comic book about their adventures! Or when Spider-Men Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire team up to defeat Electro, Green Goblin, and Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man: No Way Home to keep the hordes of people who know Spidey’s not-so-secret identity from overrunning our world. Or here, where transparent authorial self-insert character “Batton Thomas” teams up with opaque actual author self-insert character Tom Batiuk, presumably to Fight Crime. I don’t know, but if I were Lillian Mackenzie, Harry Dinkle, or Ed Crankshaft, I’d watch my back—these guys are cartoonists—they have erasers and they know how to use them.

Bizarro, 7/24/26

Whoops, looks like the stress finally got to our guy. Forget what I said yesterday.

Crock, 7/24/26

“At last! Our comic strip is saved!”

Phantom, 7/24/26

Chatu “The Python” has surrendered and put on the AI-enabled “Tokoloshe” control anklet, and I’m frankly a little disappointed in him. I mean, this is the guy who tried to Ebolify the whole world through an infected fruit-bat scheme, and blew up half of downtown Mawitaan just to get back at his nemesis the Phantom. He may or may not be a coward, but there is no way he’s gonna let some rich upstart out-evil him! All those years in that cage must’ve softened him up, or maybe he went mad from that interminable drum solo. Either way, get ready for an epic supervillain match-up and battle—now enhanced with AI!

No Comments of the Week on my watch; last week’s victor Victor Von gets a twofer.

—Uncle Lumpy

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Rhymes with Orange, 7/20/26

Lady lets herself be intimidated by inanimate objects. Gonna be a long day.

Six Chix, 7/20/26

Unhealthy, infected, diseased, rotting, morbid, disgusting meat. How to say you’re vegan without saying you’re vegan.

Dustin, 7/20/26

The animosity between Ed Kudlick and his son Dustin is well-established, but doesn’t it seem lately that their barbs are getting sharper? I mean, today’s exchange is basically, “You’re lazy and doomed to failure!” / “You’re stupid and can’t speak English!” It won’t be long before these breakfast chats devolve into cursing and flinging coffee and cereal.

Phantom, 7/20/26

The Phantom’s very first nemeses—the pirates of the Singh Brotherhood—were in it for the loot. But the motivations of the current crop are harder to parse:

• Leopold Braga, Admiral in the navy of landlocked Rhodia, says he serves its ruling junta by serving Ignis Vindicta, but how? Is there some bribe, contract, alliance, or other alignment of interests between the parties, and if so to what end?
• Chatu “The Python”, Wambesi terrorist, used his native Bangalla as a safe haven to carry out attacks in Rhodia. So why does Rhodia, through Vindicta and Braga, want him on the team?
• Eric Sahara started out a billionaire playboy, then took up recreational lone-wolf terrorism as “The Nomad”, taking over Chatu’s gang when he thought the Phantom had killed its leader. Why? Don’t know!
• Elon Musk Ian Mollusk Ignis Vindicta (tr. “Fire of Vengeance”) is a wealthy motormouth nutjob who wants to rule the world from space. He surrendered all control of his Nomad/Chatu project to an AI programmed on his own bullshit, and constantly brags about how he has no influence over what it does. Why? Got me.

Beyond “bad guys do bad things,” these villains are united only in their hatred of the Phantom, which kinda seems like a side quest, and hasn’t worked out well for any of them in the past.

—Uncle Lumpy