It’s not the clam’s fault it’s very quiet
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Panel from Slylock Fox, 11/16/25
Poor Slick Smitty. He thought he had found a way to beat Slylock at his own game by not technically lying as part of his scheme. Even Slylock had to chuckle ruefully and acknowledge that the sign said “see the signing clam,” not “hear” it! Sadly, if you flip your screen upside down, you will learn that Slylock was able to “convince” Smitty to return his customers’ money, presumably by threatening him with the full force of the Forest Kingdom’s monopoly on violence, even though he violated no law, because that’s just how the new regime rolls when it comes to humans. The clam presumably remained enslaved.
Crankshaft, 11/16/25
Look, not to get close to finding Crankshaft relatable or anything, but a thing about getting older is that you’ll think “C’mon, this aspect of culture is relatively recent,” and then you look it up and it’s actually like 10 or 15 years old, and there are plenty of people who are full-on adults now who would never remember a time it didn’t exist. Anyway, I was about to go on a quest to figure out when the whole pickleball craze took off, got as far as some suggestions that the game (which has been around since the ’60s, and was invented by the last Republican to serve as Lieutenant Governor of Washington) became popular as an outdoor activity during the COVID-19 lockdowns, then dug into my archives and discovered that these teen twins were tweens or maybe even younger in a 2021 strip and decided, you know what? I’m gonna let this one go. I’ll allow it. Ha ha, to a young person, ping pong would seem like a pickleball variant, wouldn’t it?
Dick Tracy, 11/16/25
“Oh ho ho,” quite a few of you said, last week, “I’ll bet Rojo Ozob is some kind of villainous clown, what with ‘Ozob’ being an anagram for ‘Bozo.'” Well, you were right. There he is, plain as day: a villainous clown, realistic, tough-looking, and maybe even a little sexy. I hope you’re all happy. God have mercy on your souls.
48 replies to “It’s not the clam’s fault it’s very quiet”
Slylock Fox:
I see that Slylock is practicing law without a license, and not very well. A fair inference from the invitation to bargain on the outside of the tent is that if you pay the $5, you will see the clam sing. What’s more, if — as is the case with all clams, so far as I’m aware — the clam doesn’t actually sing, the Forestville residents would be entitled to a refund in any event, because the clam they will have paid $5 to see is not, in fact, a clam that’s capable of singing, without regard to whether it actually sings when the residents see it.
Crankshaft:
Wow — the Doublemint Twins! But where’s their gum?
MW: PARROTS DON’T WORK THAT WAY!!!
Slylock Fox:
[Forestville residents]: “Why isn’t he singing, Slick Smitty?”
“He decided to clam up!”
I’m disappointed in Slick Smitty giving in so easily. You wouldn’t see Shady Shrew folding like that. Cassandra Cat, maybe, but that would be part of her erotic game with Shylock.
Slylock: Just how dopey are the residents of Slylockville? Believing that an animal without lungs, let alone vocal cords, can sing is Jeffy levels of stupidity.
RMMD: Get back at him, Summer. Write your own book, about an aspiring author with a tiny, woefully inadequate…sense of awareness.
SLYLOCK: This sounds like something the gang from “Rex Morgan” would flock to see. Yvonne would yell, “Muddy Shells!” at the clam.
MW: Lost in his music, Sunny fails to notice Libby sneaking up behind him as he belts out, “What’s new, Pussycat? Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh—SQUAWK!”
Slylock Fox-The people saw a prima donna clam.
MW-Is Mary too busy grooming some other teenage girl that she can’t spend some time with Toby?
FC-I see inspiration for a song that Louis Armstrong already made.
FC: Dolly’s severe myopia is starting to affect her quality of life. Too bad it’s only Billy who cares enough to notice.
SF: If this strip was called “See the amazing crime-solving fox” it, wouldn’t be technically be a scam, because we can see the fox even if this is his worst effort at solving a crime yet.
DT: Crossover with The World’s Oldest Clown The Great Wilhelm Who Never Said Anything He Just Screamed A Lot when?
Dick Tracy: All I can say is EVILSCARYCRIMINALCLOWN!!!! EEEEE!!!! [QLUNQ!]
DT: Thought for a second that the “Hall of Fame” profile in the first panel was of actor-turned-(alleged) wife-killer Robert Blake “Well,” thought I, “he’s dead, so he probably won’t sue.”
Slylock – wait, no… the paid to see a “singing clam” and if the clam can’t be proved to sing even a bit (it isn’t required to sing in command, but to all it a singing clam…), it’s a clear scam and Slylock continues to dumb down the elderly of the world (surely no children ever see this).
SF: This was the inspiration for a song in Les Miserables: Do You Hear the Bivalves Sing?
MW:
“But you tell me over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.”
“Oh, Sunny! — I just love the feelgood lyrics that you so enjoy singing!”
It’s Sunday and time for JUNGLE JIM!
…let’s
stealhelp ourselves to some supplies and ammunition…MW:
“David Clayton Thomas is even more corpulent than Ian — awk, awk!”
9CL: I’ll summarize so you don’t need to waste your time reading it: Two adults talk in a stilted pretentious manner across multiple panels that no human beings would ever speak like an real life and the last panel is them making out.
*FIN*
In other words, Brooke phones it in as usual.
Luann: That WAS gross.
MW: Just what in the Wide World of Sports is going on here?
DT – I’m trying to solve the mystery of the unnecessary comma in the penultimate panel.
DT: “A few managed to slip through the system.”
And Dick replies, “I know how frustrating that can be.”
WAIT, I DEMAND CONTEXT! Has there EVER been “the one that got away” for Dick?
SF: I tried to stick $5 in my computer so I could see the singing clam, but it didn’t work!
CS: It’s gherkinball! Honk honk!
CS – First off, the Grady Twins (Amelia and Imtooboredtoremembertheotheronesname) have been flitting between tween and teen for a decade as they appeared in both “Funky Winkerbean” and this strip. Second, while pickleball has been around for about half a century, so has table tennis. And while the former has indeed zoomed in pop culture consciousness in the last few years, table tennis has been a rec center/home game room mainstay during that same time. As such, the idea that the Midwich Cuckoos would have never seen it prior to wherever the heck these four are running into each other seems a bit disingenuous…and, more importantly, not amusing.
DtM – The big question in today’s strip is, When and how did George Wilson’s John Waters-like beneath-the-nostrils strands suddenly transform into a bushy, crimson, Yosemite Sam-style undergrowth?
Dick Tracy executes a targeted hit on Baja Gaijin. They’ll be coming for all of us, one by one.
“table pickleball” does not exactly roll off the tongue though
DT: Hundreds of innocent clowns across the city sleep peacefully not knowing how close they came to dying in a hail of bullets when Tracy is told Ozab needs to be taken alive.
FC Well, Billy, the window needs a low enough optical depth to be able to be looked through it, and if your messy smears prevent that, it’s a fair point.
HnL “I mean, of course I can just cheat with an AI prompt, but my teacher is onto that and requires us to hand it in legibly hand-written – I just don’t know if I can write down all this AI slop to paper in one night”
Flylock Socks:
“Nice little pocket you have there, Slick. Pity if a bag of cocaine were to be found in it.”
This week’s Mary Worth quote is reluctantly confirmed. I can’t find where Herbie Hancock said that music is an art form that transcends language, but his social media accounts posted the quote sometime after it appeared in the quote books attributed to him, so I’ll allow it.
What with the Wayne Shorter a few weeks ago, Moy seems to be working through the members of the mid-60s Miles Davis Quintet. Looking forward to “Shit, that fish was a motherfucker”–Miles Davis.
Shoe: Good joke -even better if you imagine the pastor is holding a gun just out of sight in his left hand.
C’shaft: Yes, this is a convoluted set-up, one requiring that Ed and Ralph play a game they’ve never shown any interest in at a community center they’ve never been shown attending and the twins to also be at the same community center they’ve never been shown attending and having nothing better to do either there or elsewhere, but all of that doesn’t matter because the punchline just isn’t that good.
DT: “You two kept ‘nearly’ trouble-free?”
“We sure did! Oh, there were a couple of hiccups–a wrongful arrest here, a family of four chased and run off the road for a broken taillight there–but you know, all part of the job.”
SFx: Not since PT Barnum posted “This Way to the Egress” has their been such a deft use of literalism in advertising. Alas, Slylock cares not for the classic gullibility traps.
@9 Liam: Is this Mary Worth Mashup what you were talking about?
@19 jnoble: on Luann: Of course, Bernice is just Miss Margie Sunshine as usual, bringing joy into everyone’s life. NOT!!!
@23 J.J. O’Malley: on Dennis the Menace: The superfluous moustache is courtesy the Lyft’s paid product placement. The coloring monkeys didn’t get the note on its correct color.
@24 matt w: I said it before and I’ll say it again: EEEEE!!! [QLUNQ!]
@26 Hibbleton: There are so many things wrong with your comment. So. Many. Things.
Luann: I know what facts I’ll be sharing at parties from now on!
9CL: Well, it’s a break from whatever the f*&^ is going on in the weekly strips. Compliment!
SF: Maybe the animal people are just hard of hearing. Even though Ma Barker is loudly complaining about the scam clam to Slylock Fox a mere two feet away, people are still lining up to give away their money.
FC: It’s hard to look through the window with your boogers in the way, Billy.
MW: What has Toby been feeding that poor bird?!? He’s vibrating!
Dustin: Jeebus! We already have Crankshaft for this crap.
JP: You know, Reena, both of you were sent here to Norway do a JOB, remember? A charity job no less, which would presumably require both of you to interact with the local community, yet you seem to be spending every waking moment with your new boy toy and Sophie has become a shut-in.
RMMD: Good grief, ‘clueless’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, Augie Ding Dong Doggy. I suggested a few weeks back that he was undergoing Buckification. I take that back. It’s even worse, he’s turning into Wilbur! Next he’s going turn his pockets inside out when the check comes and say he ‘forgot’ his wallet.
Dick Tracy did it! They did the meme “not even one of the better-known clowns”!
Apparently the price the turtle paid for bipedalism was being required to wear underpants. Was it worth it, shell guy?
RMMD: Upset, Summer goes home and opens a book of inspirational quotes to calm down.
“I knew it! Augie’s book isn’t even out yet and already my name is being dragged through the mud.”
Sfx- HELLO MY BABY, HELLO MY HONEY, HELLO MY RAGTIME GAL
Dustin: The characters of Dustin are pretty much interchangeable in their bitter resentment for minor inconveniences. Today’s strip, for example, could involve Dustdad and his coworkers and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference. I can only assume Fitch is being used as an acknowledgement that this is a terrible, terrible pun.
JP: “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to empty some tissue boxes for shoes and organize my urine collection.”
MT: Get with the times, Jules. Washington, California, and Colorado all have or are building wildlife crossings that outstrip the Tobin Land Bridge by a considerable margin. Geez, you’re the last person I’d expect to drink the “everything’s bigger in Texas” Kool-aid.
MW: Being out of touch with modern culture is part and parcel of being a newspaper comic strip artist, but Karen Moy takes it to another level. Absolutely everyone, whether it’s doughy middle-aged loser Wilbur, hardened police officer Keith Hillend, or thirty-something trophy wife Toby, listens to late-20th century Lite FM tunes, living in a soundscape that even the grocery store playlists have moved beyond. Even something so mild as a Lin-Manuel Miranda rap would be as earth-shattering as the part in Pleasantville where Reese Witherspoon introduces sex into the 1950s sitcom town.
RMMD: “Honestly, I don’t know why you’re so upset about being suddenly and unexpectedly confronted by the memory of your traumatic stalking! I thought you’d be FLATTERED!”
Look, if talking dogs, turtles, chickens, and elephants are willing to spend their money to see another sentient animal, that’s on them. Also, do you think the talking sheep of that world get offended when Slick Smitty goes on about “fleecing” the rubes?
***
“A few managed to slip through the system,” cop talk for, “They were a black guy with a skull on his shirt and a handsome Joe DIrt. They had to have been guilty of something!”
DT: If Dick Tracy ends up having to go undercover as a clown, within the city’s Clown district. Or blackmailed by the villain to walk through the Clown distract naked, wearing a sign that says “I hate Honkers!” that would be interesting.
DT – “He’s a hit man, but we weren’t after him. Because these shoplifters are completely out of control.”
DT: A few days ago, we were talking about comic cameos in Dick Tracy.
Well, we have black “The Punisher” shown here.
There is a black The Punisher somewhere in the Marvel Multiverse… right?
(You don’t actually have to check, I was making a joke)
MW: I’m tellin’ ya, Pauley (as Sunny) is enjoying the heck outta this storyline! A *real* speaking role, plus singing! This should expand his portfolio big time! Oh, he’s done scripted speech in several Pet Store scenes with Dagwood, but here he’s gettin’ some creative control!
Now, I know some folks have been wondering about the … sanitary situation … here. It’s a well-known fact that Birds, shall we say, lack control. But don’t worry – all our Avian clients wear cloaca plugs for indoor scenes. Yeah, it’s no big secret, just part of being a Show Biz professional. Of course for outdoors, they can just let it fly, as we’ve seen with the Doves o’ Love and the Charterstone parking lot…. not to mention the prolific Gulls.
@Hibbleton: Ugh, I know right?! Next, we’ll be seeing jaundiced mice in shorts and derby hats…oh wait.