The Comics Curmudgeon

81 responses to “Everything old is new again”

1. edgeways
   February 16th, 2006 at 10:49 pm [Reply]

   I know DT has been keeping up with technology, wait till you see his new watch, very 1337… Not that I actually read DT much, but upon occasion

2. RBF-at-home
   February 16th, 2006 at 10:50 pm [Reply]

   OMG

   Too friggin funny

3. Hank Kimbel
   February 16th, 2006 at 10:57 pm [Reply]

   Popeye will still never be politically correct. It is NOT okay for a woman to hit a man!

4. Hank Kimbel
   February 16th, 2006 at 10:59 pm [Reply]

   Did I just say, “Still never?” Must be the Jack Daniel’s I need to follow Gil Thorp.

5. Daijinryuu
   February 16th, 2006 at 11:27 pm [Reply]

   One of the recent Dick Tracy storylines involved DVD piracy. It was all really, really frivolous, with villains like “Download” and “Cellphone.” Then Dick BURNED THEM ALIVE. Mangled corpses and everything. Dick’s reaction? “Crime doesn’t pay.”

   Seriously, they were pirating DVDs and so Dick Tracy burned them alive. I wonder what he does to litterers.

6. adfella
   February 16th, 2006 at 11:35 pm [Reply]

   I’M A LITTLE EMBARASSED TO BE WRITING ABOUT OLIVE OYLS’ BREASTS, BUT….

   What are those two amorphous lumps protruding from Olive’s waist area? In the absence of any discernable mammary apparatus in the usual chestal region, one can only surmise that Olive is the unfortunate victim of some peculiar flippin’-and-a floppin’ sagging syndrome.

   (I’m a little worried that I even noticed this, let alone actually posted a comment. Alas.)

7. Anonymous
   February 16th, 2006 at 11:46 pm [Reply]

   Picky point, but (as somebody quickly spells it in an earlier comment), it’s Olive Oyl, not Olive Oil . . .

8. Ferd Berfel
   February 16th, 2006 at 11:54 pm [Reply]

   Nothing so modern here O’ Great Leader of Our Flock. Olive joined a ’snail mail’ Lonely Hearts Club after Popeye refused to set a date for their wedding. She also made a play for Brutus but, after getting his ass kicked for 75 years, Brutus finally wised up and wouldn’t commit either.

   Hold onto your toupee though…

   The story in Popeye before this one involved the inadvertant CLONING of Swee’ Pea by space aliens!

9. Mooncity
   February 16th, 2006 at 11:56 pm [Reply]

   I seem to recall a fairly recent (October?) installment of “Nancy” that violated Josh’s aforementioned tech trap.

   Now, I HATE “Nancy” and always have. Not the same kind of hate I have for “Cathy”, but that’s another story. But the comic I remember had something to do with cable TV, and Sluggo, in his rundown hovel, complaining he didn’t even have an antenna for the TV (or some such thing).

   Really annoying to see a comic, which for all the world looks like it’s set in the 1930’s, having the characters talking about 21st Century tech… what’s next? Gil Thorp discussing how awesome that new Edsel is?

10. zillahgirl
    February 17th, 2006 at 12:21 am [Reply]

    So, about today’s A3G…did Tommie borrow that vest from Aquaman or did she craft it herself from fish scales?

    And why am I questioning this?

11. Ugly Kidd
    February 17th, 2006 at 1:18 am [Reply]

    Bud Sagendorf definitely drew this Popeye strip, and probably did it before his death in 1994, though you never know….

    As I understand it, daily Popeyes have been in reruns since Bobby London was fired from the feature some years ago (while the Sunday Popeyes by Hy Eisman are all-new). Sagendorf’s style incorporates those mutant mammary protrusions on Popeye himself and other characters — perhaps that anatomical oddity is so appealing to readers that King Features specifically shose Sagendorf’s work to rerun?

12. Avix
    February 17th, 2006 at 1:53 am [Reply]

    It’s always an interesting question why some strips hang on as long as they do. Tracy has always been so closely associated with the Chicago Tribune that I suspect the Tribune Syndicate simply can’t imagine life without him.

    I’m less sure what the deal is with Popeye, other than that the syndicator is King Features, which maintains an amazing stable of retro strips (http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/comics.htm).
    This is an outfit that’s still reprinting strips drawn by a cartoonist who was born during the Civil War….And I can’t tell you how unsettling it is to realize that 6 years into the 21st century, there are newspapers who still think that the Katzenjammer Kids have an audience.

13. EricW
    February 17th, 2006 at 1:54 am [Reply]

    The Bobby London version, from what little I’ve seen of it, was a bit off the mark. Nice visual design, sure, but he also gave us a Bizarro Olive when he introduced her stacked Californian cousin named (I kid you not) SUTRA OIL.

    London was a former underground cartoonist, so you don’t have to be a genius to figure out what he had in mind.

14. EricW
    February 17th, 2006 at 2:00 am [Reply]

    Or maybe I was thinking of another guy altogether…dammit, that Popeye book’s in cold storage…

15. weiser
    February 17th, 2006 at 2:03 am [Reply]

    #6 Those are not Olive’s Ta-tas, but rather a stylish peplum, just one of the fashion details on her blouse. Her clothing has baffled me for years.

16. naugahyde
    February 17th, 2006 at 2:31 am [Reply]

    Does anyone read the daily re-runs of Lil Abner?
    It is surprisingly interesting, fresh and downright surreal. (Kinda politically incorrect too…)

17. NJP
    February 17th, 2006 at 3:20 am [Reply]

    Although it’s possible Olive Oyl is referring to online dating, I can only assume “profile photo” in this case means a photograph of her from the side. ‘Cause she’s built like broom handle.

18. Mibbitmaker
    February 17th, 2006 at 3:47 am [Reply]

    #8: Actually, Brutus hasn’t had so long to wise up, since his brother Bluto got about 23 years of those beatings (at least given the Bluto/Brutus fanwanks over the years).

    Popeye in general: those floppy ‘breasts’ are actually folds in the clothing, but it’s like that due to the extra material she ends up with not having actual breasts take up the slack.

    Given all of Popeye, Bluto and Brutus lusting after that stick figure over the decades, it’s refreshing (or was whenever Sagendorf did this one) to have Wimpy show he has two good eyes… or, HAD two good eyes.

19. Mibbitmaker
    February 17th, 2006 at 3:52 am [Reply]

    Spiderman 2/17: Hey, there’s a good bit for a tee-shirt: “As if Gown Man wasn’t bed enough, now I’m Justice Guy!”

    Out of context, that’d be a hell of an identity crisis!

20. Len
    February 17th, 2006 at 4:32 am [Reply]

    Yeah, yeah, even renunciate High Lamas like those sexy cross-dressers.

    http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20060216&name=Bizarro

21. Len
    February 17th, 2006 at 5:22 am [Reply]

    Effie, the worst cook in Bayonne, New Jersey, is constantly plying her boyfriend with steamed whole octopuses. Now she’s giving Blondie a run for her money by starting a catering agency. With choices like these, even the omnivorous Jeremy of “Zits” is likely to befome finicky.

    http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20060217&name=Piranha

    In Re: Olive Oyl’s physique — is she that much skinnier than, say, Kate Moss? Olive should become a super-model. And get implants for her ta-tas.

22. A Nonny Mouse
    February 17th, 2006 at 6:03 am [Reply]

    Seriously, they were pirating DVDs and so Dick Tracy burned them alive. I wonder what he does to litterers.

    Well, what do you think Dick Tracy meant when he said that the courts weren’t taking piracy seriously, but he and his crew would?

    Those pesky courts, with their demands for trials and crap like that. Dick Tracy knows how to handle DVD pirates..with a Zatch! (The past tense of Zatch is Zap.)

    You have to love how Dick Tracy stays true to its 30s roots (crooks being brutally gunned down were a staple of the comic in the early days) with a modern twist: the strip that Daijinryuu refers to is a classic.

    Granted, it’s a classic that makes you realize that Dick Tracy reached its expiration date well before its original creator kicked it (in the days when Tracy had a woman from the moon as a daughter-in-law), but still a classic.

    What was really fun was, after reading Tracy’s talk about fighting DVD pirates, I was able to predict that Diet Smith would show up within a few strips. I was dissappointed, though, in that I expected Itop, Flattop’s newest descendant, to appear, and the computer genius bad guy was instead named Mr. Pixel.

23. Johnny Bacardi
    February 17th, 2006 at 8:00 am [Reply]

    Silly peoples! That’s Olive’s shirt-tail (blouse tail, bottom of her fricking blouse, whatever) that’s sticking out there!

    I think it’s interesting that Dick Tracy is drawn by Dick Locker, who’s also a big-time political cartoonist…

24. Sheila
    February 17th, 2006 at 8:06 am [Reply]

    Gawd, yes, Moon Maid. Married to Junior. When did they start that plotline, I think it was before I was born? (I’m a Boomer, not an Xer.) The point is, they continued it WELL into the years when everyone knew there were NOT antennaed aliens inhabiting the moon and happily creating ice cubes with their bare hands.

    Those fleshy antennae of hers always gave me the creeps.

    For those of you who still read DT, are B.O. Plenty, Gravel Gertie, and Sparkle Plenty still active characters???

25. yellojkt
    February 17th, 2006 at 8:26 am [Reply]

    My first look at the Dick Tracy strip made me think that the bad guy on fire was in the engine room of one of those speedy new Zeppelins that have cut the NY to LA run down to 36 hours.

26. Mark
    February 17th, 2006 at 8:27 am [Reply]

    Yep, BO and Gravel were in this very storyline. BO went off to look for a job and got hooked up with that goofball clinging to the turbine (his name was… oh, just wait for this!… DON QUICK OATIE!!!!! That stabbing pain is Dick Locher elbowing you in the ribs.). I believe Sparkle is still around, but several years ago, perhaps even during the good max Allan Collins years, Moon Maid got bumped off by crooks, so the moon people “withdrew” from Earthly affairs. No more antennaed people in DT.

27. Jewish Guy
    February 17th, 2006 at 8:33 am [Reply]

    Olive Oyl probably sent in her profile photo to the dating service that Evil Oily uses.

    Good thing that he perished in that flaming wind generator since not only is he 50 years her junior and 350 pounds her senior – they probably are related, their parents having received slightly different last names when coming through Ellis Island…

    Thier parents, who themselves were distant cousins of the famous Oilillys, nevertheless spoke little english and had to take the last name provided for them by the underpaid, marginally uncaring government hired immigration folks who took their jobs merely to provide food and shelter for their own passel of children.

    Not caring about others and wanting for the daily lunch break and the fried egg sandwich wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper funnies section… well you get the idea – Oyl and Oily are COUSINS! Echhh…

28. Weasel Boy
    February 17th, 2006 at 8:39 am [Reply]

    I’ve got an idea for a ripped-from-the-headlines Popeye story line: Popeye is stripped of his Olympic Medal in the Men’s Downhill after testing positive for spinach. Sure, spinach isn’t a banned substance, but judging by the way it affects him, it should be.

29. RBF
    February 17th, 2006 at 8:40 am [Reply]

    In today’s (DT)Gil Thorp the rumor-monger mis-spells the reporter’s last name – duh !!!
    Somebody needs to lay off the hooch.

    http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComic.mpl?date=2006/2/17&name=Gil_Thorp

30. blueeyes
    February 17th, 2006 at 8:55 am [Reply]

    Evil Oily is Olive Oyl’s nickname. As Dick Tracy aptly says, anyone riding Olive Oyl is truly a goner because she has vagina dentata.

31. Smitty Smedlap
    February 17th, 2006 at 8:56 am [Reply]

    It’s not so much Olive’s picture that’s scaring away potential internet suitors, but rather one unfortunate missspelling in her message:

    “SWF ISO SM, age and race unimportant, must enjoy sweet pee”

32. Marc
    February 17th, 2006 at 8:59 am [Reply]

    Why yes, Wilbur, that Mary Worth is quite a wise woman indeed! I like the expression on Dawn’s face when he tells her that they will all go together and enjoy another 5 week long platispew meal.

33. anonymous
    February 17th, 2006 at 9:20 am [Reply]

    Ah, memories! All that’s needed is a panel from Little Orphan Annie and we have a Trifecta of Nostalgia.

    Now for something completely different – if the Mom and boyfriend are really getting married in Chickweed Lane, don’t they need a witness or two? Besides goats?

34. Thelonious_Nick
    February 17th, 2006 at 9:57 am [Reply]

    24- blockquote cite=”Gawd, yes, Moon Maid. Married to Junior. When did they start that plotline, I think it was before I was born? (I’m a Boomer, not an Xer.) The point is, they continued it WELL into the years when everyone knew there were NOT antennaed aliens inhabiting the moon and happily creating ice cubes with their bare hands.”

    I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I think the years when everyone knew they were not aliens inhabiting the moon would have begun in the 17th century, with the invention of the telescope, rather than, say, the 1960s. The 1960s are when sex was invented.

35. Thelonious_Nick
    February 17th, 2006 at 9:58 am [Reply]

    Judging from the above, I’m apparently not HTML-savvy.

36. Tommyp
    February 17th, 2006 at 9:58 am [Reply]

    As long as you’ve broached the subject of updating these ancient warhorses, look no further than Blondie Bumstead and Lois Flagston. They both have (gasp) JOBS!!! Saints preserve us…

37. Irina
    February 17th, 2006 at 10:05 am [Reply]

    Bad, Smitty, very bad :)

    Actually, I’d heard a long time ago, that when Popeye was first printed back in the 1920s or whenever it was, Olive Oyl was actually considered somewhat attractive. Blondie’s bazooms notwithstanding, the appropriate build for a flapper back then was to be shaped like a broomstick. Quite possible I just got lied to by a mischievous uncle or something, tho.

    And, boy, howdy! How about that Johnny Hart! That dictionary gag where he takes a word with the prefix “de-” and defines it from the point of view of a Goodfella. Amazing that the joke is as funny and fresh the 150th time he’s used it as it was the first! Laff riot!

38. Chet McCord, Wildlife Defender
    February 17th, 2006 at 10:18 am [Reply]

    I think if you look at old Blondies, you’ll find that she was much more broomstickesque in the 30s, too.

    I just have to say, the artwork for Dick Tracy is about as bad as it gets. Always has been. It’s unfortunate, because the stories must be so brilliantly conceived for the strip to have lasted so long, but I’ve never been able to get past the bad drawing. Consider this example. What’s going on in panel 1? Is the guy on fire? Does he have a bad case of gas? Is he in outer space? Is he the same guy depicted in the next panel? I don’t even want to find out.

39. micedwhale
    February 17th, 2006 at 10:30 am [Reply]

    My only question is who stabbed Olive Oyl in the brain stem with an exclamation point? That is quite a point to make, or maybe making a point was not the point. And why not use something with more of a point, you might score extra points.

40. Anonymous
    February 17th, 2006 at 10:35 am [Reply]

    So, widdle Apwil is making good choices about where she goes on the Internet. That begs the question, How is she going to explain her Comix Curmudgeon addiction to her folks?

41. Benicillin
    February 17th, 2006 at 10:44 am [Reply]

    #38:

    I need to correct you on one thing, kind sir. If you ever get a chance, get a collection of the old Dick Tracy strips: They were brutal nuggets of pulp fiction that could be quite violent and graphic. Dick was a cold-blooded killa. The art was very unique, and just like some people used to think Steve Ditko or Jack Kirby couldn’t draw, the art is now considered classic. I agree with your assessment of the modern DT though, because since I’ve been alive Dick Tracy blows. But the best thing is the Sunday strips, where they give little safety tips for the general public, along the lines of “Don’t walk around with a wad of hunderd dollar bills hanging out of your shirt pocket” or “Lock your doors at night if there has been a string of burglaries in your neighborhood.”

42. Smitty Smedlap
    February 17th, 2006 at 11:04 am [Reply]

    Seeing that National Lampoon banner and Dick Tracy all together in one place reminds me of a piece the old NatLamp magazine did in the mid-80’s — a satire on Dick Tracy’s Rogues Gallery.

    Strictly adolescent male humor — which is why the thought of it still cracks me up. The drawing for villain “F. Art Stinkley” was a classic.

    Just to kiss the collective arses of our new Network overlords a little more — man, I miss that magazine. The O.C. and Stiggs issue was perfection.

43. Irina
    February 17th, 2006 at 11:07 am [Reply]

    I can’t count the number of times I’ve been mugged when I keep a wad of Franklins sticking out of my shirt pocket.

    Man. If only I’d read Dick Tracy when I was a kid.

44. terwilliger
    February 17th, 2006 at 11:07 am [Reply]

    Did anyone read yesterday’s Rex Morgan? Taken out of context (and naturally there is no context, since the sad saga of the gambling vet is finished) we have three panels of the most wonderfully mis-interpretable conversation. The looks on the characters’ faces — Troy’s wagging finger & sidelong glance as he delivers his line — and the deformed ingenue of the gal in panel three. Yeesh! It suggests why Rex’s peck on the cheek for June was so half-hearted . . . .

45. meagan
    February 17th, 2006 at 11:09 am [Reply]

    today’s Mary Worth is a perfect example of why i love it.
    2/11: mary has her “personal responsibility” to clean up from her gabfest with wilbur.
    2/13: wilbur is about to take an important phone call, one that will bring news he’s been waiting for!
    four days later (2/17), wilbur is still on the same day as the phone call, and saying that he had a talk with mary A FEW WEEKS AGO.
    what screwy space-time continuum do these people live in?!

46. Ferd Berfel
    February 17th, 2006 at 11:23 am [Reply]

    #42 – O.C. and Stiggs! Yes! And Mike Judge gets all the credit for Beavis and Butthead. Remember that poor target of their’s? Schwab? Father accidently nailed an acoustic ceiling tile to the boy’s head?

    #44 – Glad to read someone got the same vibes from Dr. Troy ‘Cheesey’ MD I did. Sheeesh… Today, Cheesey is talking about his beard Lily’s constant ‘charity work’. She leaves him all alone so often Rex. Why don’t you swing by for a visit?

    I’ll bet Cheesey does a lot of mentoring too… especially with those young male interns… uh-ha-uh-ha-uh-ha-uh-ha-uh-ha

47. Benicillin
    February 17th, 2006 at 11:24 am [Reply]

    #43:

    One of my all time favorites was when Dick advised the general public something along the lines of “Do not engage with or be aggressive with a pack of dogs” and they had a little cartoon of some elderly woman surrounded by like seven angry mutts. Why do Sunday strips have to have these little captioned boxes for this stuff, ala Marmaduke’s “Doggone Funny” crap. WHY IRINA, WHY?!?!?

48. RichM
    February 17th, 2006 at 11:26 am [Reply]

    I think Olive Oyl might have better luck among gothophiles, with her ghoulish complexion and retro black skirt (and are those Doc Martens she has on?), plus that daring nape of neck stud. She oughtta consider setting up a page on suicidegoyls.com.

49. Windsagio
    February 17th, 2006 at 11:31 am [Reply]

    If you look at the Sunday Dick Tracy that got posted, Gas in that town is $7.50 a gallon!

50. Bitter Scribe
    February 17th, 2006 at 11:34 am [Reply]

    Isn’t that turbine in DT way out of proportion? I mean, from the scale of that guy who’s doing a handstand or whatever while his crotch is aflame, the blades couldn’t be longer than about 10 feet. Aren’t real wind turbine blades several times longer?

51. Shem
    February 17th, 2006 at 12:59 pm [Reply]

    Then Dick BURNED THEM ALIVE. Mangled corpses and everything. Dick’s reaction? “Crime doesn’t pay.”

    That’s badass. Like, Dick Cheney drunkenly gunning down his friend levels of badass.

52. Lyman Returns
    February 17th, 2006 at 1:04 pm [Reply]

    Yep, Wilbur Weston’s having a party to celebrate the non-lawsuit. Inviting Mary Worth and everything. Maybe Jane Hand will come, and have a pistol hidden in the tank of one of the johns in the women’s restroom, a la “The Godfather”, and bust a cap in Wilbur’s combed-over noggin?

    What is UP with Wilbur’s telephone, anyway? Is the artist a hermit living in the woods where there is no phone service and hence no reference to use when drawing a phone? Not only can Wilbur not dial any phone numbers with a zero in them, heaven help him if he calls any kind of automated attendant and is prompted to hit # or *

53. gershwin
    February 17th, 2006 at 1:04 pm [Reply]

    Irina,

    I think the uncle was pulling your leg. Olive was considered too skinny and lanky to be attractive even in the late ’20s/early 1930s; think of Betty Boop and Tillie the Toiler!

54. Schteve
    February 17th, 2006 at 1:30 pm [Reply]

    #48

    The profile Olive was really referring to was on RateMyRack.com.

55. Concerned Citizen
    February 17th, 2006 at 1:47 pm [Reply]

    Major Hoople still around? It, too, ventured into technology that the ’30s characters would not have ordinarily had, but the introduced technology was 20 years old by the time it hit the comics. Since it pointed out that the cartoonist was astoundingly out of touch with anything remotely resembling a life, it was a powerful use of anachronism.

56. BigJoe
    February 17th, 2006 at 1:48 pm [Reply]

    #49: No, it was $7.50/gallon, then price dropped to $1.50/gallon. That’s one hell of a drop. Of course the guy’s sign isn’t too high tech, every time he changes the price of gas he has to cross out the old price and write the new price below it?

57. MLH
    February 17th, 2006 at 2:46 pm [Reply]

    Josh-
    Glad to see you reading “Dick Tracy”; its crappiness will reward you over time. The Sunday strips are particulary silly, including a first panel called “Crimestoppers Textbook”, which gives you tips about how to avoid crime that might not have already occurred to you, if you happen to be (a) under six years old; or (b) unusually stupid.

    The guy that originated the strip, Chester Gould, continued to write/draw it for about fifty or sixty years, and in any case well after he took complete leave of his senses. This gave rise to the whole Moon Maid business, as well as Dick and Sam flying around in these anti-gravity air car things, which resembled nothing so much as garbage can with crutches sticking out of them, so that Dick and Sam looked like guys on crutches standing in flying garbage cans.

    I think the Trib owns the strip; it’s drawn by Dick Locher, the Trib’s editorial cartoonist, and was written by Mike Killian, an old-time Trib reporter until his death last month.

    The Trib tends to appeal to older people who don’t actually live in the City of Chicago proper, and who love stuff like Dick Tracy, Branda Starr (a vile strip, now written by a Trib reporter as well), and other such Moon Mullens-ish throwbacks. I think that’s why it still published some of these very curious features.

58. rich
    February 17th, 2006 at 3:16 pm [Reply]

    22: I love how Tracy looks at the charred corpses and mutters “Didn’t mean to do that”! (Followed by “Maybe I’d better give this thing to the Army” – brilliant idea! They can eavesdrop on cellphone conversations, then exterminate both parties!)

    There was a bit of fuss back in 1967 when Chester Gould gleefully showed the criminal “Chin Chillers” being incinerated (what a fascinatingly twisted strip Tracy had become by the ’60s!) (Reprints of those stories are still available from Spec Productions, I’m pretty sure). People thought the strip had crossed over from law & order to scarily fascistic. But the Chin Chillers were killers, they weren’t selling bootlegs!

59. Hogenmogen
    February 17th, 2006 at 3:51 pm [Reply]

    Dick: The guy standing beside Dick in panel three can’t seem to stay awake despite the obviously violent death presented before him.

    Popeye: Olive has two gents fighting for her affection and she has to put an ad on a dating service?

60. rich
    February 17th, 2006 at 4:22 pm [Reply]

    Ooo boy, big news in Apartment 3-G. “There’s been a sea change” (at first I thought it said sex change). Guess it means that Luann and Alan (who is this guy?) are an item now. (Though so far none of the Midnight Cowboy hustlers or other cleancut, sexually ambiguous boys Luann is always chatting with have made the slightest impression on me.)

61. Ferd Berfel
    February 17th, 2006 at 4:23 pm [Reply]

    #59 – Toggle back a week or so in ‘Popeye’ and all will be explained.

    After the ‘Sweet Pea Gets Cloned’ arc wrapped up, Olive tried to force Our Favorite Sailorman to select a wedding date. When he refused, she announced the engagement was off. Popeye replied to the effect; “What engagement? I never gave you a ring!” That answer was not well recieved.

    A now livid Olive immediately proposed to Brutus who was understandably perplexed. Popeye then informed Brutus that if he answered ‘yes’ Popeye would proceed to beat the feces out of him in new and unusual ways. When you consider that Popeye has been beating on Bluto/Brutus for 75 years now, that is some threat. Brutus wisely said ‘no’ and exited hastily.

    Olive next joined a snail mail ‘Lonely Hearts Club’ and submitted her profile. When she rhetorically asked herself why she hadn’t recieved any answers from the club, J. Wellington Wimpy opined it may be due to the fact she included a picture of herself in her application. Olive then beat the feces out of Wimpy.

    Today, she recieved a proposal in the mail. I’m hoping the letter is from Mr. Geezil, Poopdeck Pappy, or King Blozo. It can’t be Professor O.G. Wottasnozzle because he was in a recent story arc.

62. Desoto
    February 17th, 2006 at 4:37 pm [Reply]

    58: There was a bit of fuss back in 1967 when Chester Gould gleefully showed the criminal “Chin Chillers” being incinerated (what a fascinatingly twisted strip Tracy had become by the ’60s!)

    Gruesome deaths have always been a fixture of Dick Tracy (and probably the most popular one). In the 1940’s, villians were frozen to death (Pruneface, Shaky), drowned (Flattop, BB Eyes), gunned down (88 keys, Flattop Jr, Spots), strangled (Breathless Mahoney), and sliced up like lunch meat (Gargles). In addition, innocent bystanders, little old ladies, and policemen wer bumped off by the dozens. If anything, Dick Tracy’s gotten mellow with old age.

63. Len
    February 17th, 2006 at 5:01 pm [Reply]

    #60 — And does Lu Ann think that cousin Blaise the midnight cowboy won’t get all hissy that she stole Blaise’s college “chum” away from him? Or that Tommie the closeted roommate won’t go into a tailspin depression when she realizes Lu Ann still hasn’t a clue how much Tommie wants her?

    Meanwhile, in the new, thrice a week Pibgorn, the plot is redolent of Dick Tracy-esque 1940s flavor. None of the Fair Folk have shown up yet, but evidently the Bard of Stratford on Avon’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” is being plundered for inspiration.

64. Hank Kimbel
    February 17th, 2006 at 5:03 pm [Reply]

    I don’t know whether to thank you or curse you people for making me read all these cartoons I’d normally pass on if they were in my newspaper. Everytime I try to kick my GT habit, someone writes something that makes me go back to check it out.

    I suffer from bi-polar disorder which isn’t all that bad considering our earth is bi-polar.

65. dimestore lipstick
    February 17th, 2006 at 8:48 pm [Reply]

    Hey, Smitty and Ferd–

    In its complete and brilliant glory, I give you
    The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. & Stiggs:

    http://www.nationallampoon.com/flashbacks/oc&stiggs/sbocs.html

66. Frank Drackman
    February 18th, 2006 at 9:47 am [Reply]

    When I was a kid i got a paperback of old Dick Tracy comics from WW2..the artwork was pretty cheezy, but the stories were scary as ****, all sorts of creppy impalements and deaths and villains…then the movie came out with that commie Warren Beatty and ruined the whole thing.

67. Dee
    February 18th, 2006 at 2:20 pm [Reply]

    In the popeye cartoons, I always had the sneaking suspicion that Olive OYL (Thats O-y-l not O-i-L), was just a tramp who hung around the docks, waiting for her next “fix”. Sort of like some really horny seagull with a morphine addiction. Nobody really knew who her baby’s daddy was, because in the cartoons, as popeye so eloquently put it, “Theres no if ands or maybe’s, I aint having no babies, I’m popeye the sailor man…..Toot toot, roll credits”. Which obviously meant he was not the father of sweetpea. If somebody could please enlighten me on the paternity of sweetpea, it could be a great help, thanks

68. fuzzmaster
    February 18th, 2006 at 5:04 pm [Reply]

    #57: Michael Kilian died in October 2005. The lede on his Washington Post obit:

    Michael Kilian, 66, a journalist, author and cartoon-strip writer drawn to satire and intrigue who nearly engineered a divorce between Detective Dick Tracy and Tess Trueheart, died Oct. 26 at Inova Fairfax Hospital.

69. Len
    February 18th, 2006 at 11:47 pm [Reply]

    #67 — Swee’pea, as Popeye so often explains, is an “orphink.” He was left as a newborn on Popeye’s (or was it Olive’s) doorstep in a basket . At least, that’s what Olive and Popeye say…

    Dee, you think Olive is so thin because she’s on drugs? And crazy for hot sailor sex? Interesting.

70. Hysterical Woman
    February 19th, 2006 at 12:28 am [Reply]

    I don’t think Olive Oly could have babies. You kinda need body fat to ovalate. Heck, she possibly genetically male. Middlesex: The Popeye Version.

71. Dee
    February 19th, 2006 at 4:57 pm [Reply]

    If you gotta better explanation, I’d like to hear it. I mean, seriously, decent women in the Popeye-era didn’t usually hang around multiple sailors so shamelessly. What I was thinking was that maybe popeye was pimping her out, and Bluto, an untrustworthy john with no ha-penny to spare for a round, was alway trying to get it for free. Sweetpea? an orphan? puhlease. Its a good coverstory for his mothers whoredom. I swear, Olive Oyl saw more action then Betty Boop and that weird dancing cow put together. She was that era’s version of samantha from sex and city. Only more morphine-dependent.

72. rich
    February 20th, 2006 at 7:14 pm [Reply]

    68: According to the Comics Journal, Killian’s last strips were to run in January of this year. So these ones may be using a brand new writer – at any rate, the strip’s clearly in a transitional phase.

73. Luke
    February 22nd, 2006 at 5:51 pm [Reply]

    That first panel in Dick Tracy is pretty awesome. But is that guy doing a hand stand? And his ass is on fire? I obviously am missing something.

74. ericl
    February 27th, 2006 at 9:35 am [Reply]

    Okay, Olive Oyl is about a century old. She and her brother Caster were in the “Thimble Theater” comic strip about five years before Popeye entered it in 1919.

    Swe’pea wasn’t an “orphink” at all. According to Sagendorff’s autobiography, the mother came back sometime in the 1940s and there was a custidy suit which she lost as the syndicate didn’t like her arriving out of nowhere and screwing everything up.

    As to anacronims, you can’t expect logic in these things.

75. Anonymous
    June 29th, 2006 at 12:26 pm [Reply]

    hi this is a person who thinks that olive oly is a string bean and i thinks that betty boop should take olives place

76. Feastmaster P
    February 6th, 2007 at 6:19 pm [Reply]

    Forgive the ungodly disturbance of the peaceful rest of this long-entombed thread, but I just couldn’t resist opining on the excruciating, brutal massacring of so many great early strips.

    Krazy Kat was never “bastardized” in the way Thimble Theatre (now just “Popeye”), Dick Tracy, or Little Orphan Annie has been simply because no one cared enough. By the time of E. C. Segar’s death in 1938, Thimble Theatre was much too popular for King Features to end. The animated shorts and licensing properties were total cash cows, and the strip, daily and Sunday, was a huge draw for papers. So when Segar died of leukemia, some no-name semi-talent took over, and turned a masterwork of pure storytelling, engaging characterization, fantastic dialogue, and beautiful art into ham-handed kids’ stuff. It appears to have actually gotten worse over the years (Shed a tear for Rough-House, my friends, shed a tear).

    Krazy Kat, on the other hand, went the other way entirely. The subscribers hated it. The editors hated it. Hell, the other artists hated it. But Hearst liked it, and Herriman was a personal friend, so it never got cancelled. Likewise, when Herriman died, there was no reason whatsoever to continue the strip, and it died with dignity. Now, of course, it’s known as perhaps the greatest comic ever produced, while the modern “Popeye” gets made fun of on websites.

    Incidentally, Thimble Theatre was originally devised as a parody of the movie-style melodrama Sundays popular in the teens. Olive’s eminently unattractive beanpole physique was ironic, as the strip concerned itself solely with her large number of suitors, all of whom constantly laud her beauty. Just mentioning.

77. Jack Parsons
    April 28th, 2007 at 2:12 am [Reply]

    The worst of the clan is Olive & Sutra’s grandman, Oylovolay.

78. globug
    June 23rd, 2008 at 11:09 am [Reply]

    I am looking for the name of a character in Dick Tracy. He was fat and the buttons kept popping off his shirt and some chickens ran around his feet catching the buttons.

    Please help

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