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Gasoline Alley, 7/19/23

I always respect Gasoline Alley’s commitment to doing shambolic, pointless plots that seem to go on forever, and we’re in the middle of a real stemwinder at the moment. To recap: Rufus is still in the hospital due to his head injury, still has amnesia, and is still showing more skin than I’m comfortable with. Today’s strip is noteworthy because of the comical terror in which these two rustics regard the Automatic Robotic Techno-nurse. This can’t be the result of sheer ludditism, since they’ve taken technological advances like CAT scans in stride in the course of their medical adventure, so it must be that they’re shocked that anyone would go through the trouble of building a humanoid robot that carries pills and decanters in its hands for this purpose, when an automated and wheeled cart would be much more efficient and easier to implement.

Dick Tracy, 7/19/23

Speaking of plots that go nowhere, Dick Tracy is in the middle of a plot that has been going so nowhere that I haven’t bothered featuring it here much, though I will tell you that there was a whole week where Dick became obsessed with a chunk of plaster found at a crime scene that was from a very specific Art Deco decoration on the front of a very specific building. Anyway, you’d think a guy that much into historic urban architecture would at least consider that the story behind moving trucks showing up in a largely abandoned warehouse district might be “gentrification” rather than “crime.”

Judge Parker, 7/19/23

Good news, everyone! A sweaty guy in a suit holding a surprisingly large knife has shown up in Judge Parker, and there’s never been a soap opera plot that couldn’t benefit from that kind of development.

Gil Thorp, 7/19/23

Gil Thorp has an intermittent tradition of doing wacky summer plotlines like “Coach Kaz becomes a rock star’s bodyguard” or “Marty Moon gets grifted at golf” or “Gil does a charity pro wrestling match with a guy whose angle is that he has Alzheimers.” But will any of those be able to hold a candle to 2023’s Summer Of The Throuple?