Simplicity is the key to brilliance, I always say
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Alice, 5/6/26
Remember how at one point Alice thought that new cars were too expensive because of all the crazy new features they had, but then just a few weeks later decided that she could get spoiled by all those new features? Well, good news: she’s still holding the line. Her old car is perfect! No technology!! And it gets her where she wants to go.
Dick Tracy, 5/6/26
“It’s because he’s a notorious criminal who someone recently broke out of prison for no doubt nefarious purposes! We’re all cops and he’s been one of our nemeses for years, so I’m not sure why I have to say that out loud, honestly. Are we on a Netflix show now, where studio execs have mandated that we need to keep repeating key plot points back and forth to one another because everyone’s on their phones and only half paying attention?”
Gil Thorp, 5/6/26
Hey, kids, do you think golf is a game that old people play and other old people watch on television? Well, Gil Thorp, the comic strip about and for (?) teens, is here to prove that wrong! It’s a sport that young people play and other young people stream on the YouTube app on their phones! Probably! Would a comic strip lie to me?
Mary Worth, 5/6/26
“It’s your mom! Which means our relationship is an abomination and I’m leaving you. Smell ya later!”
165 replies to “Simplicity is the key to brilliance, I always say”
The fact that Tommy’s remembered version of himself is about 30 years older than he really is and so cross-eyed that he can’t focus on a phone screen being held in front of him tells you a lot about his self image, and it’s not good.
FG: So that’s how Ming got into power, stolen Kiran magic and technology. Before he was merciless he was Ming the Cultural Appropriator.
MW: It sounds like Brandy used the same DNA testing company as Truck’s not-a-son — the one that in addition to the usual “some of your ancestors were from Europe” results also sends you the names, addresses, and (probably) Social Security numbers of anyone else that’s taken the test and might be related to you.
Alice’s old car gets her where she wants to go, which seems to be… traffic court… for giants?
MW: Tommy looks so baked in Panel 2, I’d be surprised if his “recall” is even accurate. Brandy has probably just run out for a latte or something.
RMMD: She’s seriously never heard that phrase?
DtM: So, I’m assuming Dad is sitting cuffed on the curb?
MW (I was just going to go with aunt!) “Why did she have to leave? I *told* her, it’s California, get away from the ol’ fuddies condo and they’re *very* accepting – I’ll move for us!”
We forget that Tommy has the intellectual and emotional faculties of a small dog. Look at that glassy-eyed gaze in the second panel — that’s the look of a man who has yet to develop object permanence. Brandy’s coming right back, boy! Who’s a good boy? WHO’S a good boy?
If you had warned me that one of today’s strips has a dog that is clearly yearning to be put to sleep, I wouldn’t have guessed Alice. Yet I’m not surprised.
Fortunately, the car CAN travel from one monochromatic void to another! Tough to find!
Luann – The Evanses are keeping the Hays code going strong in the comics world as this strip manages to reassure its elderly readers that not only is this apartment for just *the guy* so Luann can’t ‘shack up’, there isn’t even any room for ‘hanky-panky’ when she visits!
The YouTube channel is “Adventures Of The Lantern-Jawed.”
I have been sitting here laughing at Tommy’s facial expression in panel 2 for the last [[checks watch]] nine and a half minutes. Brigman, my guy, you… you didn’t want to take another pass at that? I mean, I also thought that that was Tommy’s hand holding the phone, so it looks like he’s just done a huge rip of nitrous while being gently entertained by a video called Fifty moments from Bluey that didn’t have to go that hard or something, thus answering his own question from panel 1.
Mary Worth Mashups: Are any of the three linked Modified Final Panels more interesting than the original?
“She just needs me to send $200,000, isn’t that great?! Also, Tommy, ARE you Layne Staley?”
“Babe, why did you have to leave me?” Ok, how much time do you have, Tommy?
Alice is the typical ignoramus. She classifies what is new and scary as technology, while her old car, with which she’s familiar with because it is old, it’s somehow not technology, but a natural feature of the world. Give her a op-ed to write!
This numbers means… something. But I don’t know the rules of golf, so I don’t know whether they are good or bad and I am not that invested in the narrative to care about who these secondary characters are. I saw today’s strip, but I paid little attention to it and went on with my life. This is the perfect representation of watching golf!
DT: Actually Dick Tracy is being written by the same people who write middle-brow “politics explainer” email newsletters cribbed from CNN reporting and Wikipedia. “Armed supervillains broke out of prison with machine guns. Here’s why that’s trouble – and what it means for the midterms.”
“Tommy! I got the DNA test results”. As soon as Tommy heard these words, his blood froze and he started to panic. But then he remembered he was too much of a loser to have ever fucked, so he relaxed
“Tommy misses Brandy” but what Tommy really misses is Oxycodone and Meth, not booze
Alice: Some strips find the humor in everyday life, others find the everyday life in everyday life.
DT: “..and here’s why that’s trouble: it’s boring. I mean, ‘Mumbles’? That’s the super criminal we’re supposed to be taking down? Were ‘Sleepy ‘ and Dopey” unavailable?
MW:
XTC wrote its hit “Mayor of Simpleton” after reading about Tommy.
Alice: “My old car is great! It gets me from Point A to Point B, and it lacks a rear-view camera for when I decide to cash in on that life insurance policy I took out on you!”
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: “Keep it simple, use the car to make it look like an accident,” as the criminal defense attorney once advised us on marital spats.
Gil Thorp:
“Lucas Martin shooting a 36. But that third hole can be kind of pesky.”
Mary Worth:
Tommy could really use some Prell or other shampoo ot conditioner which would give his hair “bounce.”
Gil Thorpe: This is giving less YouTube vibes than Flannelgraph, for Sunday School at the Church of Golf.
@Baja Gaijin: Without even looking, I’m going to say “yes”. A solid black panel would be more interesting than the original.
YouTube should have a version of their play button plaques for 100 subscribers, but limited to channels that are “Really? For this?!?”
MW panel 3: “His name is Trixie and he needs money to escape a foreign nations. I sent him our savings!”
For real though, there is a well-respected member of the Magic the Gathering community who has had a YouTube channel for over a decade that had a bit over 50,000 subscribers. About five years ago or so he started a wristwatch repair channel that now has over a million subscribers. You never know what’s going to hit on YouTube, and I may joke about a high school golf channel but I would never discount anything as being too niche.
Also, good for Alice. With car manufacturers now trying to charge people subscriptions for things that are already in their vehicles but not mandatory for their operation, like heated seats, older used cars are increasingly the way to go.
Mary Worth: Holy crow! Tommy’s eyes in panel 2! He didn’t fall off the wagon, he plummeted!
DT: “….Because I can’t travel to some exotic location to hunt them down on the department’s dime.”
MW: I’m guessing she left him because Tommy was busy reliving “Sabrina Carpenter x Reader” fanfiction in his head rather than listening to her.
“Yes, Aunty, but you drive a Ford Pinto, and you drive it really badly! Don’t you listen to Ralph Nader.”
“Oh, sweetie, I yearn for the warmth of a fiery death. You will too after a few appearances in this comic.”
Dick Tracy: Is that “clearly” Mumbles on the security camera, DT? Because it looks like a generic black-and-white sketch to me. What’s the point of having huge cast of grotesque supervillain-adjacent criminals if you’re not going to draw them?
Alongside the Gil Thorp does-Marty-Moon-have-any-YouTube-subscribers, Between Friends reruns have the writer saying that her 200 daily blogviews is solid audience progress (or would be if they weren’t mostly her refreshes…) which would be nothing to brag about – showing that cartoonists being out of touch with newfangled technology outreach is constant over the years.
Wary Morth:
So Whisky was enticed away by a fake DNA result, and was abducted by the pig butchering scam centre as a replacement for Trixie, is that it?
No, of course not, that has the possibility of being interesting.
Wary Morth:
“Her name is Trixie!”
MW – “I found my father’s half sister! It seems she worked in a sawmill! Terrible accident, but somehow she survived.”
Murky Tail:
Dreama must be dreaming if she imagines Mark Trail Sr has any fortune for her to scam him out of.
He doesn’t wear an ascot, does he?
Alice: If I were a child trying to make sense of the world and found myself confronting Alice, I would have lots of questions. Is this what adults are? Is this what I’ll be someday? Stuff like that. We wouldn’t get around to her car until at least Hour 2.
DT: “Clearly Mumbles.” I love that.
GT: Today’s young people know better than to make direct eye contact with anyone. That’s why the eyelines in this strip are all over the place.
MW: “I remember it like it was yesterday. Brandy had just gotten some life-changing news about her family, but I was too distracted by the Great Gazoo to notice.”
Dustin: I’d suggest Dustdad seek help for his binge-eating disorder, if I didn’t want him to gorge himself into an early grave. I assume his co-worker feels the same.
Luann: So, when does Phil figure out that he’s touring a 55-and-older community?
MT: “Dreama” is an even more obvious fake alias than “Trixie.” These AI scammers need to learn to stop giving the game away like that–or they would, if their marks weren’t so blindingly stupid.
Pluggers have no social life.
RMMD: “Oh, that’s so cute! Being a fabulously wealthy actress, I’ve never had to concern myself with the economic struggles of normal people. Anyway, off to roleplay being one of the commoners!”
@cheech wizard:
That is the first time I laughed out loud today. Thanks.
@cheech wizard: COTW.
GT- out here on the big island, local radio tells me that UH-Hilo has won the league championship in golf for four years running. So kids are playing golf. The fact that the radio station is telling us that means No one is watching it.
Wrecks Moregone:
“Crunching numbers? That reminds me, I heard a crunching noise coming from my bed when Mud and I were….uh, play-wrestling…..on it. I think you have dry rot.”
@Baja Gaijin: Wow, Tommy looks *so* relieved to know he’s not going to face a paternity suit.
Josh, two days ago: “Will he turn to weed? Pills? Crack cocaine? Our lord and savior Jesus Christ?”
Tommy, in today’s flashback panel: “How about all four?”
You could make an argument about the amount of unnecessary features or omissions of features in new cars, but what’s not arguable is that Alice appears to have omitted the most important part of a comic strip: some sort of humorous or dramatic moment.
@Ken: Brandy certainly used the same plotline (and that of Sonia’s as well)…or at least tried to and ended up botching the landing, because who cares finding a long lost aunt (of a father you have an extremely strained relationship with by the way)? Realizing that she can’t do better then tired recycled plot points, Moy sent the Brandy character packing.
MW-Poor Tommy. His girlfriend left him for half a woman instead of staying with the half man that he is.
FC-Ah yes. The lesser known Egyptian Plague, the Plague of Worms.
RMMD-Ya know moving money from one set of books to another. Trying to stay one step ahead of the IRS.
MW-It wasn’t Brandy’s fault that the plane crashed killing her.
MW-“Tommy, can you hear me? Tommy, are you on drugs again.”
I think it’s fine if the Alice’s writer uses her comics as platform for her internal debate on whether to buy a new car. It’s not like writing the comics pays enough to take such an important financial decision without due consideration
“Uh-huh-huh-huh. But-tered toooooast.”
-Flashback Tommy, probably
Dick Tracy’s villains used to be shot on film in a prestigious Hollywood movie directed by Warren Beaty and interpreted by first-class stars such as Dustin Hoffman. But these days, the only camera that will shoot them is a store camera. How the mighty have fallen! At this point I would rather be shot by Dick Tracy himself!
So the Tommy storyline is literally “Record scratch. Yup, that’s me. I bet you’re wondering how I got myself into that situation. Well, it all started a month ago…” Mary Worth is innovating if Moy is starting to use tropes from the 1980s!
@Liam: Tommy, can you hear me? [Can you feel me near you?] Tommy, are you on drugs again? [Do you see the bugs again?]
“Babe, why did you have to leave me?”–the deservedly lesser-known sequel to the Anne Bredon/Led Zeppelin classic Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You.
Blondie: how did someone as lazy and useless as Dagwood become an office manager?
MW: That is the face of a man who’s inner monologue is just radio static
MW: Not sure why Moy bothered to start in medias res only to immediately transition into a flashback. To paraphrase Ebert, I guess she’s “learned from better stories that writers sometimes relay plots nonlinearly, but she has not learned why.”
LUANN: “Gee if only you can live in the dorms! But you have to be smart enough to go to real college for that, so my only hope is to experience it vicariously through you, pseudo-boyfriend of mine!”
Alice : “But auntie, isn’t having a cd player in your car ‘technology’ ?”
“OBSOLETE TECHNOLOGY DOESN’T COUNT AS ‘TECHNOLOGY’! ”
************
Crankshaft : doesn’t have any short-sleeved shirts/short-legged pants outside of beachware…. we’re lucky. He could be in a Wilbur-esque Speedo.
….Too far…?************
Luann : so, all the tiny sheds in parents’ backyards, and the dorm room, are these vast spacious, luxurious dwellings, but the luxury condo is smaller than a broom closet (smaller than the broom closet they converted into Shannon’s room, even!)?
I mean, I get it if it’s intentional, but it’s still kinda weird?
************
Mary Worth : by “why did you have to leave me?”, Tommy doesn’t mean that Brandy broke up with him or anything, she just went on an adventure to find her long-lost half-aunt, and hasn’t come back yet or called him or anything. And it’s probably not been that long, like a couple of weeks tops!
Alice: Alice’s “25-year-old car” is presumably a 2001 model, which means it for sure has electronic fuel injection, at least two airbags, power windows and locks (my 2000 car had them), maybe keyless entry, cruise control, air conditioning, anti-lock brakes…quite a lot of “technology,” actually.
@Comically Challenged: I read that and immedately thought of this: https://youtu.be/7zkFsLrWgto?si=yyvC5kE38Wrlrh5N
Go to 0:57 for the specific moment, but I’ve found the whole thing hilarious ever since I was a kid.
@Bob Tice: Willie Nelson owned a golf course. He told a reporter the best thing about that was he got to set par at each hole. “See that hole? It’s a Par 12. I birdied that sucker yesterday”.
@Ettorre, @Lauralot: It’s not like we need the backstory of why Brandy left Tommy. The surprising thing would be if she was still with him.
So today’s comics are an “I prefer my old stuff” story, an uncritical police vs. criminals story, a golf story, and Mary Worth just got out of a “young adults should take back parents they had good reason to go no contact with” story. Josh was right when he said “newspaper comics are fundamentally an art form by and for old people.”
MARY WORTH: Tommy, judging by your goofy, spacy, cross-eyed stare there in panel #2, I’m guessing that your girl left you because you were high as a kite.
Alice-The cops can’t track Alice if there is no GPS in the car.
@Anonymous: #63: re-Luann: I believe Shannon’s room was a converted laundry room. Still small. The one in my house is no bigger than a walk-in closet.
Frazz – Caulfield is egotistical yet not self aware, so he thinks Mrs. Olsen is referring to Amos Van Hoesen.
Rex Morgan – After he crunches these numbers, he’ll crunch the second set of books.
What happened to all the roots country fans who were visiting because Truck made the Glenwood Motel famous?
9CL – Now the dog is worshipping their legs. The only positive character just went into the toilet.
Speed Bump – This is good, but the bird should be a goose.
Alice – It’s amazing that a comic strip could be completely vacant of anything remotely approaching humor. That punchline is all line and no punch.
@TheDiva: re: Luann: “So, when does Phil figure out that he’s touring a 55-and-older community?”
What, with no bingo night? No shuffleboard? Looks to me like a 20-something fuck community for losers (“morning mingle” — is that desperate or what?). It might just be the perfect home for Phil.
@Baja Gaijin: Mashups – The first one is definitely what happened.
Does anyone have Ted Turner in a dead pool?
Does anybody really understand what Alice is supposed to be about? Is it supposed to be amusing? Is it some kind of experiment to prove that human beings can produce a product that is less relatable to other humans than something produced by generative AI? What’s the frequency, Kenneth?
Alice: The 25-year-old car is a 75-year-old Model T Alice bought used in 2001. After she breaks an arm cranking it she’ll WISH she had one of those newfangled electrical ignitions.
9CL: Mark yesterday, May 5, 2026, as a landmark in McEldowney history. He went one day without drawing or referring to comely girl legs.
I totally misread panel two in Mary Worth and thought Tommy was holding the phone, just recording his girlfriend for no reason at all. Maybe she left him because she didn’t respect his new career as a vlogger.
GT: Has Marty Moon been pointing his smartphone and creating the images of the last strips?
Crankshaft: Ed looks as in place at the gym as at an airport.
Beetle Bailey: On her way over? Can’t the US Army imagine some crazed pointless emergency to keep rando civilians off a misery base?
BG&SS: A sneaky Jughaid brings both President Franklin and President Hamilton to show and tell. He gets an A.
Alice – “Aunty, how is it possible to have a car with no technology?” “It’s imaginary, dear. Just like you. And my dog. And that mysterious big wooden thing. When are they going to bring my meds?”
DT – Sam: “Sorry, could you repeat that, Tracy? I was checking my phone.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“I hope I’ll never need to remember flag semaphore”
“Well, it’s not as if anyone would be goofy enough to use it for normal conversation”
“Oh, no?”
ALICE: “No technology”? What does she call an internal combustion engine? What does she call the wheel? Yes, I know…People think “technology” only refers to phones, cyberspace, etc. But it doesn’t. One of the greatest technological advancements ever devised by humanity is the toilet. I will die on that hill.
Mary Worth: “I got the DNA test results” is something Captain Olivia Benson would say while sweating a perp in the box, not a phrase a civilian would use when they received their family history from Ancestry or 23andMe. Did Brandy discover she’s secretly related to a powerful underworld clan, and therefore doesn’t need to spend her life attached to a guy who (probably) still stacks cans at the local grocery store? Of course, it’s possible that she left him for his own protection, because now she’s expected to marry the son of a rival syndicate to consolidate power, and he would be seen as expendable. Either way, it’s sad times for Tommy. Could a heartbreak haircut be in the offing? Honestly, a 40-year-old shouldn’t look like that even in a beach town, if he expects to get any respect from the criminal underworld and/or local yentas.
MW – Oh, friend, we were all led to believe that the question you asked in Panel 1 was rhetorical, and that’s the way we’d like to keep it. I mean, we all assume it was some boneheaded move of yours, so why shatter our fragile web of belief? Also, we just don’t care that much.
“….and here’s why that’s trouble. MMR vaccination rates are way down across the Neo-Chicago region.”
“Tracey, you’re thinking of Mumples, the guy with the really swollen neck.”
“But Brandy — you’re a fine girl! What a good wife you’d be…oh, you’ve heard that before?”
MW – “I found my father’s half sister! It’s ME!”
Alice-Alice finally snapped and has Gearhead Gertie locked in the trunk of her car.
@Anonymous: That was me. Not her father’s half sister, but anonymous, that was me.
@Rover Berkeley: Air conditioning. Florida and Texas are two of the most heavily populated states in the US. You can always poop in a hole, but who would consider it possible to live down there without AC?
What a Frazzhole!: Ha ha,its funny™ because Caulfield just found out he’s a comic strip character.
™Ha ha,its funny because….. is a registered trademark of Joshua Fruhlinger Productions. ©2026
MW- All Tommy needs are some tasty waves,a cool buzz, and he’ll be fine…
MT- If Niecy is to Mark as Mary is to Sharon, is $20.00 to Mark’s Dad as $200,000 is (was) to Hardly?
Alice: I cannot believe I’m saying this, but I totally agree with Alice on this.
Gil Thorp: Maybe it’s just because of my total lack of golfing knowledge, but the only person under the age of, like, fifty that plays golf that I’m aware of is a porn actress with awesome tits who mentioned golfing as a hobby in an AMA she did once. Which is probably a better way of advertising golf to the younger generations than anything Gil Thorp would do.
Mary Worth: Josh jokes, but I’m genuinely baffled as to where else this could go. I mean, there’s no way that Moy would ever tackle something like incest in Charterstone, but I can’t comprehend how Brandy learning more about her family’s history could cause a break-up between her and Tommy without a Community-style reveal of accidental cousin-fucking (“Now this is a man that knows how to marry his cousin!” – acclaimed actor Keith David). Like, what, is it going to be revealed that Brandy comes from a mixed race family and Tommy responds by going on a racist screed? Is Tommy going to say “yo, your aunt has a nice ass” when he sees a picture of Brandy’s new family member? I can’t wrap my head around it.
@I speak Jive: I dunno. I always saw him more as a “Cyclops” or a “Wolverine”, to be honest.
“Trixie” makes his way to Santa Royale and pairs up with Tommy. Together, they fight crime.
Rex: Wouldn’t ‘Cum Stains on the Sheets’ be a better name for this motel?
@Baja Gaijin: The second was what I was actually expecting on my first reading of the strip.
@Ettorre: I don’t know how many holes they played. So the numbers are untethered from context anyway.
Alice – There is going to be an Amish-type movement to lock technology into a certain period before everything went bad. I should brush up on electronics repair to keep people’s CD players, CRT TVs, and other old tech working.
Dick Tracy – Mumbles doesn’t need to have the plot repeated, since he waits to buy the Dick Tracy Omnibus collection and follows completed storylines.
Gil Thorp – I’ll catch the highlights on TikTok instead.
Mary Worth – Why is Tommy looking up at June Brigman, the artist of this strip? No wonder Brandy left you, Tommy!
Dick Tracy:
I don’t typically read the comics that Josh doesn’t post, so I don’t know how Dick remembering that Mumbles is a furry led to them looking at this CCTV footage. Is this Mumbles at the Furry Store? Because it looks more like he’s at a bookstore. Sure, a hypothetical Furry Store would likely feature books, including graphic novels like Beastars and Blacksad and regular novels like The Animals of Farthing Wood, but it would also carry things like video games, figurines, tabletop RPGs, fursuiting material, and art supplies. Plus a Furry Store seems more likely to be a sustainable business model in a place like Seattle, where even a furry brewery exists, but I suppose Neo-Chicago has enough furries to make it possible. The question is, will Dick visit this store and talk to the owner about his encounter with Mumbles, and if so will will he be able to sell Dick some merchandise? I suggest the aforementioned Blacksad, it’s about a private detective in Furry 1950s New York, he’ll love it. The cops are all dogs and other canines, so maybe Dick will go on a voyage of self-discovery in which he realizes the depth of his connection with German Shepherds.
So Alice actually needs a car? I assumed she traveled by closing her eyes and slipping through the liminal space between worlds.
@Ukulele Ike: #91# One Southern humorist, whose name escapes me, wrote that the most hated villain for Confederate apologists and Lost Cause advocates shouldn’t be General Sherman but Willis Carrier, who in 1905 invented modern air conditioning as we know it, and made it possible for millions of damn Yankees to flee the Rust Belt and move to the South. Once the Civil War ended Sherman and his army went home and never came back. Even the novel “Gone with the Wind”, one of the biggest promoters of the Southern Lost Cause myth admitted that the Yankee soldiers stuck pulling post war occupation duty hated being there as much as the Southerners hated them being there.
EXPLANATIONS– At Last
– JP: So Bogdam himself has been the secret double agent spying on Char, Ned, rest of family for April and Randy. So why didn’t he then knock on the door and introduce himself?
Still unanswered: is his larynx permanently damaged?
– MW: so Brandy left voluntarily and probably too busy with long lost family to remember her onion ring fiance from grocery store.
Still unanswered: is Brandy incommunicado because she is an heiress who has left her old life or becaus she is tied up in Blackbeard’s closet?
FG: Ming learns that terror can free himself and friends.
Still unanswered: so why does he see the enemy not as corrupt government but merely as an entire people (remember, he and corrupt king started the war)
@Philip: “Alice – There is going to be an Amish-type movement to lock technology into a certain period before everything went bad. I should brush up on electronics repair to keep people’s CD players, CRT TVs, and other old tech working.”
That’s not a bad idea. I was just doing some spring cleaning and came upon a bunch of tape reels of my old airchecks. How I wish I still had a reel-to-reel recorder. Maybe one of those “home video” transfer businesses could help me.
@Vulpes: But Blacksad features morally ambiguous bad guys, storylines that DT wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole, and no spoilers here but I don’t think he’d root for the protagonist after the events of “Red Soul”. I personally recommend it, though, along with “Grandville” for a similar vibe.
@Don’t Sleep on the Wetspot by Petula Clark: I can’t remember what show it was, but they were doing a police procedural sketch in a motel setting. One of the detectives turned out the lights and switched on a “bluelight” to check for body fluids.
The entire room lit up.
@Rover Berkeley: “One of the greatest technological advancements ever devised by humanity is the toilet. I will die on that hill.”
Just don’t pull an Elvis.
REX MORGAN M.D.: Wow Lonnie sucks as a paparazzo. I mean he know Lorna/Mae Mae’s real identity and where she’s living right now. And yet, despite the fact that he was all up in their grill while following them, he doesn’t take any “scandalous” photos of this top-tier-but-mysteriously-reclusive star having a “secret rendezvous” with her burly beau outside a sleazy motel room? I mean, dude, a real trash-peddler would have already had the caption of “Chubby Cassanova” under his pic. I know that this doesn’t invite as much lurid sensationalism as Lorna/Mae Mae serving runny watery eggs to beaten-down truckers, but, do better, man!
@Baja Gaijin: The answer is always yes.
MW: I think it’s an amazing detail that while Tommy remembers things that happened in the past, he can only envision them as happening to the version of him from the present. Hopefully he keeps this “I’m having a flashback right now” face through the replay of the entire break up.
Alice is so committed to simplicity, her hands have become simple cones with only rudimentary fingers! And I say huzzah to that! Who needs all those complicated digits to grab things and such? As an old school theropod, I just bash my head against the steering wheel to start my car!
Alice: Sorry, guys, but I think people questioning how Alice’s car gets her to where she wants to go with no technology are being a bit too literal.
What? No, not about the “no technology” bit, about thinking Alice exists in a physical space and “where she wants to go” is a different physical space. Alice just sits in the engineless, tyreless, possibly frameless and wheelless car for a few moments, consciously reimagining her own interpretation of the void that surrounds her, and that is how she gets to where she wants to go.
HtH: Pro-tip: If your joke hinges on the audience noticing two characters in profile have black moustaches (one real, one fake), maybe don’t use a black background and rely on the white space created by sloppy pasting to make them visible?
JP: “So, best of luck for the next ten years, see you never!”
MW: I’m sorry, there was a whole thing going on with DNA tests and long-lost relatives of a Charterstone-ajacent person, and Mary missed it? I hope this was recently enough that she was at least dealing with H—-y’s problem, and this didn’t happen while she was giving Toby advice about freaking parrots — advice she didn’t even take. I’m telling you, the woman’s lost her edge.
OTF: To give Dick Tracy’s hamfisted exposition its due, it’s not quite as hamfisted as informing three people currently doing their work at an outdoor picnic table “You three do your work at this outdoor picnic table.”
RMMD: It would be so funny if it turns out having the cafe open for breakfast doesn’t actually make enough money to cover the expense of having the cafe open for breakfast. It would be even funnier if Mae Mae “Definitely Not A Rich And Famous Actress Slumming” Clodfelter cheerily explained that she doesn’t actually need to be paid, if that helps.
SH: So, at the very moment when Samantha decides to give up on Operation DeeDee Must Stay Human Whether She Wants To Or Not Because She’s My Friend (why? Who knows!), DeeDee gets a text that she could be a film star, which presumably will be enough to convince her she does want to stay human even though she’s shown no interest in appearing as herself (or even her human self) in a film before. Francesco Marciuliano reads this comic and thinks “That’s a bit contrived, isn’t it?” When he’s not breathtaken by the We’re The Good Guys, Therefore It Can’t Be Bad If We’re Doing It morality of the main characters.
@Activist: FG – maybe he does/did, we have 30 years from this till his takeover, which will involve deposing the young heir he saved, not the mad king. Bonus points if to-be-king also resents his mad father’s war whims, assures his subordinate-friend that when *he* has the power it will be *different*… and then it isn’t. I wouldn’t bet against this story leading to “Ming started out genuinely trying to oppose the corrupt powers then it goes to his head and he becomes a despot as well”, but I could also see “Ming realizes only absolute power rules on Mongo and from the start of his rebellion simply wants to take over as the ultimate Boss”
@Activist: oh, and anoter bit re:FG – my read of all the “duty-bound” narration is that Ming has hated this war since the start, only the mad king started it. I don’t think he considers the Kirans as an enemy, just an obstacle in the way of returning to the surface alive.
@Guillermo el chiclero:
Billy Yank from Boston, 1868: “I hate this heat. I hate this humidity. I hate all these snakes. I hate hauling our drinking water up from a fetid swamp. But I have to admit these bastards fry a mean chicken.”
@Vulpes: Blacksad is beautifully drawn and colored. Truly a work of art.
Alice-Alice has a Flintstone car.
@Horace Broon:
For RMMD, years of watching and reading bad fiction makes me think the place is not doing well and Mae Mae will end up buying a controlling interest and running it.
JP and MW: like watching someone riding a bicycle for the first time, wobbling here and there always teetering on falling over. So is it finally time to end the CIApril branch or is this strip going to do a time skip to where Charlotte grows up and goes looking for them? Mary clearly has been moving up in circumstances from selling apples to hobnobbing with people who can lose $200,000 without much regret. Soon, will she be meddling in the affairs of billionaires?
@treetown:
On Rex Morgan M.D. : the Glenwood Motel is STILL a better investment than the Valentine Theater.
Or Montoni’s.
Gil Thorp and Alice today in a heated competition to see which can be be less of a comic strip.
@Ukulele Ike: I was in born in Florida, both my parents lived there since the early 60s, and most of my family is of the opinion that air conditioners were the only thing that made the state habitable. They won’t ever leave, though.
@Ukulele Ike: Yeah, it looks like Phil is at one of these high-end near-campus apartment communities that spring up, and then immediately turn into a cesspool. I remember apartment shopping for the first time in my life, and once or twice I accidentally ended up looking at a place that was way out of my price range. So this week’s Luann is somewhat relatable to me.
Late Thread Cuisine: This one is definitely not a April Fools joke.
@CanuckDownSouth:
#115 FG: CDS, you’re right, of course, the narrator (whoever that is) has probably pledged allegiance to the corrupt/demented king and nonetheless noted everyone knew attacking Kirans was a bad idea and fought reluctantly.
And you’re right, these events took place a couple decades in before FG and Dana. What puzzles me is if that ghost-like “friend” is really double dealing, hoping to get info for itself. Also Ming says he has given adventurers a long cord of pseudo-freedom so Ming can keep tabs on the resistance. My bet is that the vein has Ring cameras allowing Ming to see you what the adventurers find.
And when they all (Adventurers and Ming) see what corrupted Ming, they’ll all hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
@Y155 richardf8: That’s a cheeseburger pizza!
@Baja Gaijin: My wife calls it caviar. I call it fish bait.
@Horace Broon:
#114. JP: “But don’t worry, Ned, we’ll drop in every five years or so just to mess with her mind and tell you what a great job you’re doing. And as payment since you can no longer go back to your CA home, you can write scripts about us. Oh, and watch your back, our enemies are looking for you.
@Baja Gaijin:
Roe? Just say no.
I have to admit it is artistically appealing.
@ectojazzmage: Re ALICE, thank you. It’s not that I believe my concern about whether I could deal with the control panel of a new pickup is any kind of “brilliance.” But my recent trip to a dealership, because my 23-year-old pickup is heading for truck heaven, was genuinely unnerving. Now I’d like to know just how old a used pickup I would need to avoid whimpering.
@Ukulele Ike: Well, yes, that is a good point. I will rate AC at the top of the list, too. I’m way up north, and even I don’t like being caught without AC in July.
@Ettorre: Yeah, Monkey Island 2 began with the protagonist Guybrush hanging onto a rope over a chasm.
Paraphrasing:
Elaine: Guybrush Threepwood, you turn up in the strangest places.
Guybrush: Hi Elaine, could you help me out?
Elaine: Tell me how you got into this mess.
Guybrush (still hanging onto the rope) -sighs- it all started with….
@UncleJeff: No promises, but I’ll try my best not to.
@Banana Jr. 6000: #124: Several have commented that Phil could never afford to live there on his nursing home orderly’s salary. True, but keep in mind that Luann is the comic strip equivalent of a bad TV sitcom. In most sitcoms characters live lifestyles that they could never afford if they were real people.
@Baja Gaijin: “Roe Roe down my throat, tasty it doesn’t seem… scarily, barely, rarely a food, I think I may just scream.”
Alice: If Alice ever picks up a dictionary and finds out what the definition of “technology” is, her mind will be truly blown.
DT: “And the first one who says ‘right here in River City’ is fired.”
GT: Time to start looking for those viral teenage golfing videos.
MW: Over and over, Tommy wishes he could walk back the next words he said, particularly the word “threesome.”
@Guillermo el chiclero: I knew somebody who pointed out that in bad sitcoms, people live in houses they could never afford, but go into a panic trying to raise a comparatively small amount of money. Luann is like that, too.
C-Shaft: Bringing a rolling suitcase to the gym isn’t even in the top 25 stupid things he does.
Dustin: The “World’s Okayest Lawyer” can’t even lie convincingly. Again, the question of how he got hired at this firm leads unavoidably to nepotism, fraternities, and possible blackmail.
HtH: No, it didn’t and couldn’t get less funny, but it’s educational to learn that there were Groucho disguises eight centuries before there was a Groucho.
JP: Hey, you know how Kraftwerk used to dress up mannequins to look like Kraftwerk to make some of their public appearances for them? Don’t know why I just thought of that. Or why I just wondered why CIApril isn’t apologizing to Bogdan for getting him beaten up. (Like she didn’t know that would happen.)
Luann: I’ve never seen any property owner try to tempt renters into a studio apartment with a grand tour, hors d’oeuvres, and a spa. Is that a special San Diego thing?
RMMD: Pretty sure “make sure we keep the lights on” = “decide whether this is the month I torch the place and start a new life under a new name.”
Archie – Jughead, stop traveling back in time to when there were pay phones everywhere. It’s embarrassing!
F&E – Just one more rock and you’ll be prosperous enough to enter the Ernie Bushmiller era!
@Peanut Gallery:
He’s just hoping to meet Bill and Ted.
Is “Alice” the mysterious Mrs Columbo? No wonder the Lieutenant doesn’t display her picture.Columbo’s always saying,”My wife has a car,but its only transportation, gets her from point a to point b.
@Peanut Gallery: Wow,Archie is really mad* at Jughead “stealing” from Ma Bell.
*real kung fu eyebrow motion!
@Rube: It’s intended to prove that “Simplicity is the key to brilliance.” It’s nowhere near simple enough yet.
@GarrisonSkunk: So that’s how he made Jughead’s hat fly off in the last panel!
The Familliar Mucus: “Make sure its the one with the radioactive finish,Dolly!”
@Rube: Does anybody really understand what Alice is supposed to be about?
________________________________________________________
Its supposed to spark a line of ironically bought Alice merchandise. Like Care Bears™ but less furry.
@The Rambling Otter: Its nice that Elaine Bennis got a new gig.
@139 Artist formerly known as Ben: on Dustin: DustDad has a very expressive tongue. Explains how he keeps his job and his much-hotter-than-he wife. [shudder]
No ones mentioned Alice has given us a new character – Doe Eyed Dog. In the decades ahead Students of Carpy Comic Strips will note may 6,2026 as the day “Alice” introduced its most relatable character…Doe Eyed Dog, staring at the reader pleading silently, “Please get me out of here! I’ll even take a job in Six Chix! Anything to pay the kibble bills!”
@128 Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: That’s not caviar.
@130 Deadly Goon Bugs: That’s not roe.
@136 The Rambling Otter: It’s NOT ROE! It’s chilled muraisu with a hint of white broth, combining cold omelet rice with white dashi jelly. The “roe” is little jelly blobs.
@Baja Gaijin: [shudder] indeed.
@UncleJeff: Don’t smoke the golf course grass Willy!
@Rube: Verse 1: Robert Lamm]
As I was walking down the street one day
A Rube came up to me and asked me
What the Hell’s the comic on my screen
@Rube: Does anybody really understand what Alice is supposed to be about?(About Alice) If so, I can’t imagine why
(Oh no, no) We’ve all got time enough to cry
Does anybody really care?
@Baja Gaijin: Now I have a powerful craving for chilled little dashi jelly blobs.
@Rube: I dunno, that actually makes sense–if they’re trying to make payments on a house they can’t afford, any kind of unexpected expense is going to be a problem, because all of their money is going to the house and none into savings.
@156 Ukulele Ike: SNERK!
MT: “Fortune,” eh? So this really is a competition with MARY WORTH. Mark’s dad is going to send his catfish a cool $500,000! Beat THAT, Ascot Boy!
As someone who decided to just buy new tires for his 2012 car instead of buying a new car that will have a bunch of panels and AI and junk that I don’t want or need (and new cars will require in-car surveillance too), I can relate. Although I’m not sure if being like Alice is a good thing.
@Peanut Gallery: Is this the only time we’ve seen Jughead smile without food In the same panel?
Could the.next “Alice” please be titled “Its been done” and have the ghost of Jack Benny appear before Alice saying,”Driving around in a twentysomething vehicle? Its been done!”
Alice:
“Aunty, why is it that all the principals in this strip appear to be under the constant influence of psilocybin?”
No technology!! It doesn’t even have wheels! It’s not really a car so much as a steel box that I have to drag around, but it’s convenient to put my stuff in. Ha ha I wish I could just get pants with pockets instead, am I right girls?
Cars are no longer “technology” once they’re old enough to drink, apparently