Comics of a certain age
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Dick Tracy, 5/3/26
There’s no such thing as the “J. Duveen Art Gallery” (though Joseph Duveen was a famous early 20th century art dealer), but the fictional building so named in this strip appears to be a Frank Gehry design. I’d like to believe that in the Dick Tracy universe, Gehry worked extensively in Neo-Chicago, taking inspiration from the dramatic and abstract skull shapes of the various members of Tracy’s rogues gallery.
Mary Worth, 5/3/26
Not a lot of new stuff in this Sunday recap of the recap, but I do like how languorous Mary and Toby look in that hot tub. Mary is so relaxed she can’t even bring herself to lift her hands out of the water to make air quotes around “relationship” and “girlfriend”! Anyway, I admit this plot has been fun but I’m hoping that the Sunday quote from martial arts master Jet Li presages an upcoming storyline that’s a bit more dynamic.
Crankshaft, 5/3/26
Crankshaft did a strip about hot flashes, and it didn’t make a pun or wordplay of any kind about them, and you can tell from Ed’s picture here that he’s absolutely furious about it. “If I had been there, it wouldn’t have went down like it did,” he’s thinking. “I would’ve malaproped ‘menopause’ so intensely that people would be talking about it for years.”
38 replies to “Comics of a certain age”
Mary Worth:
“Wow! Look at the cool tsunami, Grandpa!”
Slylock Fox-The projectionist spliced in a frame from another movie.
MW-Here’s the problem. Harve never stopped believing that Trixie was real. Harve was never convinced that Trixie wasn’t real.
Mary Worth:
“Mary, some modern theologians posit that if there is indeed a h*ll, it will be personal to each of us who experiences it. Being in a hot tub with you in perpetuity would be right up there for me in the ‘eternal damnation’ sweepstakes!”
Crankshaft:
“Now, when Pluggers depicts guys in flannel shirts with their trademark compromised digits, would that be ‘men o’ paws’?,” muses Ed.
Mary Worth: Did Mary and Toby really need to travel all that way just to lie in a hot tub? Even if Charterstone doesn’t have one (doubtful — the aged residents need some way to ease their aching limbs), I bet you could find a dozen gyms and spas within a square-mile radius. I guess maybe they wanted to be somewhere their fellow condo denizens wouldn’t overhear them poring over the most embarrassing details of their friends’ private lives — or, more important, somewhere there wasn’t even a tiny chance that they might be joined by a Speedo-clad Wilbur.
Mary Worth:
A distracted Dr. Jeff runs over and flattens the Hart clan with his Brobdingnagian dreadnought.
The End.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – The Ned Flanders wannabe should go straight to the tabloids and get whatever he can for it. If he tries to blackmail Mae Mae, she my just come out and tell the world where and who she is and ruin his gravy train. This is all based on the absurd storyline that anyone cares about Lorna Starr.
Crankshaft: Of course I’m no expert, but I was unaware that hot flashes include onomatopoeia.
Crankshaft : …are Pam’s gonads GLOWING while making loud noises!? If not, what is supposed to be going on? If YES, then WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?
************
Mary Worth :
I’m hoping that the Sunday quote from martial arts master Jet Li presages an upcoming storyline that’s a bit more dynamic.
Look, the most martial arts we’re going to get is stuff like Wilbur karate-chopping the air and spilling a drink all over someone.
…Or maybe someone attending a Tai Chi class.
Wrecks Moregone:
What part of working for El Pompadour in a cafe with no customers in a dead end town where your only friend is a has been like Mud, whose songs nobody even mentions any longer, is a “normal life”?
DT: Thrill as you watch a package delivery man plan out his afternoon…
MW: I starting to wonder if Charterstone is actually some kind of special living assisted community for dementia patients that need to be reminded constantly of what happened the previous day.
CSh: I’m not sure that “WHUMP!” would be the noise I would have attributed to a hot flash. Unless maybe they were thinking of it as a kind of bioluminescent flatulence? I’m not really sure how menopause works.
Hardy Har Hart has turned his entire family [bar his son in law who is yet to appear in this strip and hopefully has run for the hills/barricaded himself in the pig butchering scam centre that’s his side business] into basket cases just like him.
MW: In a special crossover with Slylock Fox, can the readers spot the 6 differences between the grandsons?
MW: Sharon’s husband still not in the picture (literally). Maybe he’s not entirely happy with the new living arrangements, and is finding an endless list of minor home repairs that prevent him from going on these little family outings.
Speaking of which, I’m not sure where they’re supposed to be, but if that’s meant to be the railing of Harv’s boat it’s the size of an ocean liner. Eat your overcompensating heart out, Dr. Jeff.
MW — If I were H@rvey I wouldn’t be standing so close to the rail between two kids who really need tuition money,
MW Well, that explains why HH can shrug off losing 200 grand, he got *quite* the payout for setting up his daughter unwittingly to have her children as part of a human cloning trial!
DT — Just a few more minor details to iron out, but I’m 90% there on my self-guided tour of Neo-Chicago. I knew I didn’t need a travel agent to help me!
MW: OK, fine, I give in. It was never about robbery, scamming and human trafficking. It’s about family. Robbed, scammed, trafficked family.
H&L: Is “five-tool player” a real thing? What about crotch-grabbing? You can’t leave out crotch-grabbing.
C’shaft: In the penultimate panel, I honestly thought that Pam had farted.
@Liam: Here’s the problem. Harve never stopped believing that Trixie was real.
I’d bet that if Trixie — that is, whoever’s replaced John in the call center — texted him tomorrow with a “tearful” explanation, he’d be right back to sending money. Which would be a great follow-up, but we’re not going to see a storyline that makes Mary look bad.
“*Loneliness* makes a person do some *wacky* things!” says Toby, in a hot tub, in public, with an expression of ecstasy on her face.
As Josh pointed out yesterday, in Mary Worth-verse “loneliness” seems to be the euphemism for “horniness” …
I must say that I didn’t expect Mary Worth to be the first mainstream comic to go full porno.
DT: What kind of monster uses diamonds for checkboxes?
@MKay:
“Five-tool player” is in indeed baseball scouting cliché (hitting, power, speed, glove, arm).
I see a lot of “oops! bit off more than I can chew!” in the comics today:
MW Moy wanted to do a scam storyline, wanted to show the enslaved workers and either realized any followup of the scam center escape was beyond her plotting capabilities… or was convinced by the connection to Asia to drop it before it became a mess of stereotypes at best
RMMD wasn’t able to keep up with the art demands of the weekdays but did intend for Lonnie to have *some* cover for his video-taking
JP hasn’t yet realized that this retcon needs re-retconning because the whole weeks of stalking makes no darn sense, but I expect that will never be acknowledged – the real mystery in this plotline is whether the writer actually thinks it makes sense or knows it’s ridiculous and just doesn’t care as long as he gets to do action and tying-up sequences
Phantom is … on the cusp. Is it really better for White Dude to take on a legendary part of a tribe’s culture if the tribe basically enlists him reluctantly to do so? Bets are on for how offensive the Nth attempt to bring the Phantom backstory in line with modern sensibilities will be!
@matt w: One whose name in the Neo-Chicago Tracyverse doomed him to be forever entangled with playing cards and their suits?
H@rvey’s daughter will explain him that sex is expensive and dangerous, but there are other ways to reproduce. That’s why her sons are clearly clones
You know this shadowy figures is deeply disturbed because he prepares a to-do list with rhombus instead of squares
@Gil Bates:
Well, let’s see:
1. Hans is sporting a blue tee shirt; Franz is wearing a red one.
2. Hans (the “Goofus” of this “Goofus and Gallant” pair) recklessly uses only one hand on the guardrail to balance himself; cautious Franz uses both hands.
3. Hans has a close-mouthed grin; Franz flashes his teeth when he smiles, in the style of his simian evolutionary ancestors.
4. Hans thinks his mom is totally dorky for sporting Star Trek haberdashery and stays as far away from her as possible; Franz kisses up to her.
5. Local coastal vultures have Franz in their sights and initiate the process of beginning to circle around him; they stay clear of Hans.
6. Hans believes that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny; Franz isn’t buying any of it. (You can just tell.)
@CanuckDownSouth:
I agree, Trixie was meant to play a much larger part in this story – otherwise the revelation of his real name and his cinemaesque jump over the wall make no sense.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
In fact by now Mae Mae should be aware that Hollywood Whatsit is *still* inexplicably asking where she is, so she’ll be recognised sooner or later. All she has to do is issue a statement saying where she is, what she’s doing, and the bubble is punctured. But that would be too much like common sense.
FG I am absolutely on board for what was looking like Ming started out having understandable reasons for opposing the Old Order before he went down the road to despotism, I am likely going to be fine with Ming had any ambitions / despotic tendencies amplified by the allure of powerful artifacts/ beings getting him to think He Is THE Solution, but if this is going all the way to a Ming is literally possessed by a Power and never was _bad_ himself story, this strip will go into the “grumpy curmudgeonly read” pile
CS: Hint to Batiuk. Instead of whump, a miniature geyser blowing steam from her groin would be clearer in concept.
@Ukranazi Stepan: *Wayyy* too much common sense. Heck, it’s not some terrible revelation like Letterman going public about an affair to thwart a blackmailer – it might even revive tourist interest in the town and café beyond the roots country set. Come have your coffee served by a former film star!
MW: If you’re going to use a quote about family, you should quote an actor from the Fast and Furious franchise, not a fucking Expendable.
DT: That art gallery looks like a giant banana peel covering it.
Was it made by Gorillas? Dick Tracy does have Gorilla people doesn’t it? I mean… Art Dekko looked kind of chimp-ish at least.
MW: The staff at the spa turn the hot tub setting to ‘tempest’ to hasten Mary’s departure but to no avail. They’ll need permission from corporate before going full ‘cauldron.’
If Ditto has five tools to grab, I’m really impressed.
@CanuckDownSouth: That’s how I felt honestly, about Castlevania: Order Of Ecclesia
Mentor: Our order was created to destroy Dracula, find the glyphs to stop him.
(Later)
Mentor: MWAHAHAHA! Our order actually worships Dracula and was trying to revive him all along, using you as a pawn.
The big reveal was pulled out of the writers’ asses. As nothing foreshadowed it, although the creators had hinted that the mentor was tempted by the dark side at some point, changing sides mid-plot.