Fast cars and fast takes
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Dick Tracy, 12/18/25
There was a certain amount of chatter in the comments on the day of Ghost Cat’s big reveal, with some people claiming that cat-themed superheroes are not what you’d call traditionally “masculine.” But the Ghost Cat is trying to disabuse everyone of those notions in the course of this car chase: grinning maniacally as his fellow lawman begs him to slow down, muttering something inscrutable about “driv[ing] the tail of the dragon,” that sort of thing. Very butch.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/18/25
Did you guys hear that they trademarked the word “Christmas?” They said it was to stop stores from using it for promoting their sales but now Santa can’t even say it! What a world we live in!
Dustin, 12/18/25
Nice try, syndicated newspaper comic strip Dustin! You’re not going to make me feel bad for Dustin’s dad! He sucks and his self-loathing only makes me stronger!
Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/18/25
I dunno, Michelle, the two of you have been having this excruciatingly boring conversation since Monday and there’s no end in sight, so at the moment I’m actually thinking that time isn’t flying by anywhere near fast enough.
40 replies to “Fast cars and fast takes”
Dustin: Ed Kudlick uses the plugger ice cream bowl, known to non-pluggers as a “large mixing bowl.” Greedy, bombastic, selfish, dickwadish, twatwaffley, 6-7 lardass. And those are his positive traits.
Dustin: There are people on Youtube who make their living going to restaurants and filming themselves eating huge amounts of food. Just saying if Dustdad can eat two one-gallon bowls of ice cream at one sitting he might want to consider a mid-life career move.
@2 Hibbleton: Within a year of becoming a mukbanger, the Dustfamily would have to knock down a wall to roll Ed out of the house. He’d make pluggers look positively svelte.
Mother Goose and Grimm:
“And that’s not all. Blitzen is going in on the quarterback as a linebacker on designated plays; Comet is taking an extremely fast-paced turn through our solar system; Donner is off to a pass in California; and Cupid‘s arrow has struck someone who’s interested in Vixen!”
Dustin: Ed, you idiot! Those pints of Jeni’s failed Mashed Potato Ice Cream sell for top dollar on the dark web!
Thank goodness Blitzen hasn’t joined the German Army.
RMMD-“It sure does seem like the days just drag and drag. Why one day can feel like a whole week or two.”
MW-“Forty whacks with a wet noodle, Ian.”
FC-“Close the door! There are Mary Worths out there!”
RMMD:
“Have you and Augie made holiday plans?”
“We’re going to string copies of his manuscript across his mantel!”
“Why in the world would you want to do that?”
“We will have wanted to make sure that ‘Our stalkings were hung by the chimney with care’ !”
TIL that the “tail of the dragon” is “a world-famous, 11-mile stretch of U.S. Route 129 located on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee… The road is renowned for having 318 curves in just 11 miles.”
Dustin: Egad, the hideous creature is growing larger.
MG&G: Everyone’s favorite Christmas tradition: listening to Santa telling you what he wants.
Hi and Lois don’t smile at much but the thought of Ditto looking more like his chunky father (Thirsty) brings joy to Lois’ face.
MGG: And the worst part is that his name has to rhyme! I’ve tried Lancer, Cancer, Necromancer… and they’re all shit! At this point, I’d settle for Hansard, or Panzer, or even The Answer!
DT – Ozob’s Flooring IT – perhaps a better business model would be floor covering a wider range of service establishments….
MG&G – He got the lead in North Pole community theater Christmas production of Showgirls….
Dustin – They ain’t enough emotional eating to fix you….
RMMD – Have I mentioned I’ve got a garage full of his self published book? They make great Christmas gifts….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
RMMD: It ain’t over until Michelle reminds everyone that she’s CERTAINLY glad she has a HUSBAND.
MG&G: Is this a job offer? I don’t know whether to think about a reindeer in a tutu or a geriatric goose harnessed to a sleigh.
GT: Thanks to the two-artist system, readers never know if they’ll be greeted by Gil, the square-jawed champion of rectitude or Gil, the shifty-eyed grifter.
MW: Memories! My favorite insult to our resident evil parrot was, “scrofulous avian.” However, I never actually went nose-to-beak with him. Because beaks are sharp. A fact that Professor Genius is about to learn.
MG&G: Some cartoonists will tell you to block out how much space you need for text before drawing the speech bubble, but that advice is for squares and losers. Just YOLO it, and if you make a mistake, just squash a line or two to fit. No-one will notice.
Why is the driver Ghost Cat when the other cop is the one with whiskers?
You can see the reason for the malaise in US society. People react to the decline of dense social networks and the dissolution of traditional family by eating giant bowls of ice cream by themselves at night. Yes, they are Bowling Alone
Dustin: Joke’s on Dustin’s dad: that’s a large bowl of leftover mashed potatoes, not ice cream. Or maybe joke’s on Dustin’s mom. Don’t know, don’t care, either way the carbohydrates will shut down his pancreas soon enough.
@matt w: That’s not a cop, he’s a snitch, and I think he’s supposed to be [squints] some form of godforsaken man-monkey chimera?
S4th: “For instance, I finally can finally fix the fact that I never told you I *hated* that insipid ‘Starlee and the Moonbeams’ show you were obsessed with. I hope you finally broke yourself of that habit and didn’t marry some enabler with the same psychological issues!”
Luann: Um, if you are both working two full-time jobs apiece (and in this economy that still ain’t enough to maintain that mansion you have!) you don’t have time for *any* traditions, you morons.
DT: Boy, the chaps down at DC Comics must be reading this and thinking ‘how’d we ever let THIS guy slip through our fingers!’
In the Mother Goose&Grimm world, I can only imagine that dancing in the Nutcracker is the only job that anthropomorphic rats can get. Because they’re rats, and that’s sad.
MW: Celery? Oh. Just carrots.
This strip is peak Gil Thorp. (1) Gil has apparently never met Isis Pillar, one of his starters, even though high school sports teams typically practice in the month leading up to the first game, you know, to get the players into form and for the coach to decide on who to put in and at what position. At Milford High, though, you have exactly one (1) practice prior to the big day, and if the head coach happens to be out sick, it’s you’re in. (2) Now that Gil’s girlfriend has introduced him to the idea of burning through his 20-odd years of accumulated sick days for shits and giggles, he’s going to reach absolutely Olympic levels of checked-outed-ness.
Mother Goose and Grimm: Since the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord begins at sundown on December 24th, you’re looking for help on the big day, fat man. You should also dress in white for the glory, innocence and purity of Christ, rather than red for the blood of martyrs, but that’s neither here nor there.
First the Super Bowl becomes “The Big Game,” then Christmas becomes “The Big Day,” What’s next — God becomes “The Big Guy Upstairs?”
Dick Tracy: Ah yes, the “hills” north of “Neo-Chicago.” Reminds of Tom Waits’ classic “Diamonds on my Windshield”:
RMMD: That needle-scratch is the sound of a writer realizing it’s a week to Christmas, and they’ve done nothing to set up their usual “family and friends around the table” montage. Time to scramble! At least they’re ahead of the Mary Worth crew.
MW: Ian needs a cat.
JP Given that step-grandma has actually started she’ll be rational and not ask for Charlotte back while Alan is dealing with *ahem* depression, I’d say you’re set till adulthood, kid
MG&G – “Dasher got a job delivering food! Comet got a job scrubbing sinks! Cupid got a job on a matchmaking app! Donner got a job leading pioneers over the Sierra Nevadas!” There. I took care of the next four strips for you.
Time flies like an arrow; RMMD flies like tedium…and money, lots and lots of money.
@D.Z. Hill: Aha! That’s a valuable Clue to the Secret Identity of the masked vigilante “Ghost Cat”. So, he’s from the Tennessee / North Carolina area. Hmm, who do we know who fits that profile…
Seriously — We all know it’s Buford, right? A five-year-old reading this strip would put it together. So why do I have this feeling the eventual reveal will be treated as if it’s a surprise for the readers?
@Charterstoned: What are you talking about, he’s already got Toby! Oh…
Dick Tracy: I like how the “kitty whiskers” on the Ghost Cat’s mask look like a stylized spider. Finally, a hero who can infringe on two major properties at the same time!
Mother Goose & Grimm: MG and Santa were about to throw down in panel one. Does this extremely seedy saint think the ladybird is poaching his talent for the ballet? What’s going on here?
Dustin: A decent gag, solid delivery, Dustin’s father in deep emotional pain. What’s not to like?
@The Quiet Man:
On Luann :
IMHO, it’s clear that despite the fact that Toni uses the phrasing “WHEN we have kids”, Bwad and Toni both know neither of them actually WANT to have kids, and thus they can use whatever excuse they can to pretend that they WOULD, but CAN’T. “We both have full-time jobs as firefighters” is the most handy (and true) pretext.
“We don’t want to unleash a second Shannon on the World” comes second (if they ever admitted it)…I have a HUGE rant in me about how Toni merely ACTS like she wants kids (because “normalcy”) but actually doesn’t want the responsibility of raising a kid foisted on her, while Bwad only wants kids because he wants a do-over on his childhood and he wants to be the “cool” and “nice” big brother instead of the hated asshole he was to Luann… but this is enough words typed about FRIGGIN’ LUANN…
@Charterstoned: “MW: Ian needs a cat.”
Short only of Ian suffering a full psychotic break, wringing the bird’s neck and stuffing it—whole and still twitching—into his mouth, a Sylvester–Tweety situation would be funniest outcome of this storyline. Obviously, it’s not going to happen. Instead, I assume, Mary will half-heartedly meddle with some warmed-over aphorisms before a solution presents itself through no doing on anyone’s part, and Toby and Ian go back to pretending to kind of tolerate each other, mostly by never spending any time together.
I estimate about 1 kg of icecream in that bowl. If that’s a second helping, it’s a lot. It would be quite a lot of food for someone to eat in one day. Not sure if I should be worried Dustin-dad is turning into Dagwood here or just disgusted at the image of him nibbling at that mountain of iecream until it’s turned into sloppy, room temperature soup.
“Oh, you’re from North Carolina?”
“Nah, I mean chasing the tail of the dragon. It’s a term for heroin abuse – and I said heroin without an ‘e’, no matter what Phantom Kitty says – that I picked up in Rangoon after the war. Anyway, you got a hit? I’m getting a bit shaky right now.”
Dustin my eyes: You will ALWAYS be sad. Deal with it.
MW: *Ian shakes fist* “That reminds me! You also broke my bottle of Axe Cologne!”