This goes beyond bothersome. I alone am brave enough to call out Heathcliff on his nonsense
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Dick Tracy, 7/6/26
This Dick Tracy storyline isn’t just about the seedy, underground world of hard-core video “gamers”; it also introduces the strip’s readership to advanced cybersecurity and network concepts, like virtual private networks, or “VPNs”, a cutting-edge networking technique that was invented in the early 1990s and is only familiar to such tech-savvy users as “people who work office jobs from home” or “people who want to access offshore gambling sites.” Anyway, the big brains over at the FBI have narrowed down the hacker’s location to somewhere in North America, probably, so this case should be wrapped up in no time.
Heathcliff, 7/6/26
I like the fact that both the dogs and the humans are letting us know, each in their own way, that the vision of Heathcliff on a slug-chariot bothers them. Seeing him (I assume) inch forward agonizingly slowly yet standing tall in triumph unsettles the mind across species. You’ve gone too far into off-putting whimsy this time, Heathcliff. Too far!
143 replies to “This goes beyond bothersome. I alone am brave enough to call out Heathcliff on his nonsense”
Those lines are slack! The slugs can’t be exerting any force! This alone in this strip makes no sense!
Heathcliff:
“He thinks he’s Yul Brynner as The Pharaoh!”
Heathcliff:
” ‘Action’ in this strip always proceeds at a snail’s pace!”
Heathcliff:
“Where are they headed, anyway?”
“To the gastropodpub!”
DT: Not telling the FBI Cyber unit how to do their jobs, but doesn’t that more likely imply the hackers aren’t in North America? Isn’t hiding the country you’re in one of the main applications of VPNs? At least that’s what I’ve learned from the linked Network World article by some guy called *squints* Josh Fruhlinger?!
DT “Of course, like I said, this is all just guessing. Its also possible that someone left the network password on a post-it note on a public place…”
Heathcliff Uh oh, normally there should be a little slug perched on Heathcliff’s shoulder reminding him that he is not a God at regular intervals during his procession. Without that he will surely go mad with power….!
Blondie: LEAVE ROOM FOR JESUS!
That’s a rare Heathcliff that actually makes sense, the joke being that Heathcliff has chosen to mock the dogs who are powerless to chase him by making the slowest possible triumphal progress, and they have to ruin it by adding that guy making a comment on it. What’s his problem, anyway? Is he just that big of a dog lover?
Heathcliff: “I’ll get the salt”
MW: ‘Heed my warning!’ ‘Munch my shorts!’*
RMMD: Tonight’s awkward hand gesture by special guest Lady Fingers from ‘The Addams Family’.
CS: We’re STILL going with this???
S4th: You know, Ferris Bueller was an asshole who needlessly got his ‘friends’ in trouble to satisfy his own raging ego, just a few ‘endearing quirks’ away from being Wilbur Weston. Sure that’s who you want to be name dropping here, Ces ol’ boy?
Ph: This is some hardcore wish fulfilment here.
*Tip of the hat to Mike and the Bots.
DT: I like the FBI has ruled out the possibility that someone outside North America is using a North America-based VPN, even though ads for VPNs often tout this as a feature (“get around country-level blocks on streaming sites!”)
CS: Papa Dinkle may have died, but this story hasn’t yet.
Pluggers: There’s no way that Plugger picked up that shell without dropping to his knees, using a grabber tool, or asking his wife/grandchild to do it.
Heath: Guy stops teasing dogs into a frenzy long enough to shit talk Heathcliff. Displaying naked snails in public is a line even he won’t cross.
Dick Tracy:
“So does this show us the technique the hackers used to try to infiltrate the computer system, Fritz Ann?”
“No, Sam. It’s a visual depiction of the tortuous plot lines in Prince Valiant!”
HEATHCLIFF: Not my personal choice for Slug Czar, but he thought of it first, so enjoy the ride, Heathie.
MW: And so begins Wilbur’s new gig as The Oracle of Charterstone.
RMMD: I’m hearing everything they say in Edward G Robinson’s voice, see?
H&L: Pretty pathetic, Ditto. You bring shame to mischievous kids everywhere.
MW: It’s probably foolish to rely on the artwork, but Tommy’s expression in the second panel looks more “I’m going to burst in there and give him a piece of my mind” than “aw gee life sucks I’ll go use some drugs”.
Heathcliff:
“He’s recently taken up baseball, and he thinks that this is a way of increasing his slugging percentage!”
DT: Fritz Ann has broken out the 3DBB.
DT It’s possible the writer’s misunderstanding of VPN basics is from learning about them from infographics as void of actual facts as the background one. “The internet is… atomic! with _tunnels_! between, uh, hidden _computers_! I’m sure I can trust 1st gen AI renders to teach me accurate info, just like its graphics have alerted me to the plague of mangled 6+-fingered people sweeping the globe!”
Luann Bernice, that is *not* helping. Please quit giving introverts a bad name.
@Banana Jr. 6000: CS: Papa Dinkle may have died, but this story hasn’t yet.
Some might say it died a couple weeks ago. It certainly stinks badly enough.
DT – By my green candle! The FBI has overlooked the biggest clue to the hacker’s whereabouts. Ubusoft’s best-selling game “Merdre! (Le Jeu Pataphysique)” is set in Poland — that is to say, nowhere.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Doctor Marcus, there’s someone who wants to meet you”
“Don Abundio, this is Doctor Marcus, the chiropractor”
“A pleasure, Doctor! I just have a few quick questions for you”
Pickles – What happened to Earl’s moustache?
spamscam at #21
(wow this time the hover-text includes Korean characters)
@StripReader: Say, you’re not by any chance accessing the internet by means of a “VPN” based in North America, are you?
The colorist disembodied Heathcliff’s tail, but visually, it’s kind of interesting?
Dick Tracy: Sigh. Fritz Ann is right: life was much simpler when the internet was just a vast series of tubes and all you had to do to stop the bad guys was clamp off the right one. Or shoot them in the head, that would work too.
@Pozzo: Tennessee Tuxedo will NOT fail! Unfortunately, all they’ve got is Sam Ketchem in a red bowtie and gren suspenders.
“But,” she continued “it’s also possible the hacker could be from anywhere in the world. With my VPN it brings up a whole map of the world and you can pretend to be from almost anywhere. Kinda the whole point of a VPN when you think about it. So tell Mr. Tracy we don’t have ****”
@Peanut Gallery: Dick Tracy’s been looking for an excuse to break out the decerebrator.
Also Dick Tracy: Yes yes, the grasp of internet technology is dated and the schematic is massively oversimplified (what the hell is an internet “tunnel”?). But what did we expect from crime fighters dressed in pearls and bow ties?
DT — “The hacker might be too.”
OK, that statement contained absolutely no new informational content–kind of like when CNBC says a stock might go up or a sports show jock says the Chiefs might win the Super Bowl.
I agree! Heathcliff has gone too far into off-putting whimsy this time! Also, that woman in the background really needs to get checked out for chronic venous insufficiency, those ankles are looking mighty swollen!
Luann: Borenice could join OnlyFans, but no one would watch.
Anyway, she has all sorts of options. Go running! Buy a bike! Get a fucking JOB. Take up gardening. Start an affair w/Mrs. DeGroot, it seems like she’s been grooming you for awhile now.
Anything other than the whining.
That chart is clearly naming the culprits as “Charles Ettinger” and “Mike Curtis” (this comic and its bizarre made-up names really put a strain on its believability) so go arrest those ne’er-do-wells!
***
While Dick Tracy’s slugging faces and putting a stop to crime, Heathcliff’s facing slugs and taking his sweet time.
Also Heathcliff! What, no laurel crown? No army marching behind him, no captives, no picta toga or white oxen to sacrifice to Jupiter? At least Heathcliff got the four horses, er, slugs right. Truly, the most half-assed triumphal procession every, which just rubs the salt in that much deeper. (And takes care of the slugs once you reach the Capitoline temple to boot.)
Are we sure this is really Heathcliff? There’s no way that black-and-orange menace would celebrate slugs, not when he could put his own face on his chariot.
MW: Somehow, “Heed my warning, Dawnie” is the most unnatural thing any human has ever said in this strip. And considering the gems Mary Worth has given us in the past (“Gram loved color,” “Since we work out together, you already know about my progress with strength training,” “It’s up to the individual to comply or not,” and “Chicken cutlet sandwiches, assorted sides, and a variety of soft drinks!” to name a few), that’s truly saying something.
Heathcliff: I need someone to animate this so that Heathcliff and his slugs are barely moving, while the DISRESPECT YOUR SURROUNDINGS portion of “Mr. Highway’s Thinking About the End” loops in the background.
@Ukulele Ike,yyT: Mostly I remember Ernie Anderson as voiceover for ABC Television, especially for “The Looooooooooooooove Boat!”
From yesterthread…..
@I speak Jive, yyRMMD: Beatty likes and needs his villains to be idiots.
And I was wrong. It’s upscale Jordan’s, not the diner. Now I’m bored. Back to MT. At least we may see Happy punch out Mark.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: A super advanced VPN – they aren’t just logging in from Korea, they’re logging in from 2015!
DtM: “You were a kid once, right?” Asks Dennis. Wilson checks through back issues.
“Nope. Apparently I’ve always been this old.”
“Ah” says Dennis. “Score one for the mature earth theory.”
DT: “Or you know, literally anywhere else, since one of the neat things about the Internet is you can access services provided in other countries.”
Heath: Eh, doesn’t bother me a bit. The entire Northern Hemisphere experiencing a heat wave, governments trending towards fascism, the Wheel of Time series not being renewed, those things bother me! Heathcliff riding a slug chariot? It’s not even in the top ten of weird things he’s done.
UNPOPULAR OPINION ALERT: “The internet is a series of tubes” is far from the worst analogy an elected official has used to describe technology they don’t understand.
MW: If Tommy goes on in and beats Wilbur like Sarge beating Beetle, a lot of sins will be forgiven, Karen Moy.
Gil Thorp—-I already miss the guest artists.
MW:
“There’s an arsehole behind that peephole,” muses Tommy, invoking the literary device of internal rhyme.
C’shaft: He WANTS us to beg for Batton Thomas to come back, doesn’t he?
Dustin: “It sounds like the sort of place that lures people in with promises of good pay but doesn’t reveal that’s a rare and nearly impossible to achieve high end, giving the vast majority of its workers sub-living wages and treating them in a frankly abusive manner.”
FG: Wow, the Sky Kingdom has a Runyonland too, who knew?
Luann: ….Seem like?
MT: I wouldn’t have gone with the Monopoly-themed wedding, but you do you, Papa Trail…
MW: Tommy doesn’t look disheartened so much as indignant. “Wilbur Weston thinks he can decide if I’m good enough to hang around his daughter? WILBUR FREAKING WESTON, the guy who has failed at literally every conceivable life metric? THAT Wilbur Weston?”
“North America, eh? I’ll cover the ground from the Darién Gap to Nome. Sam, you’ve got Key West to Cape Columbia in Nunavut. We’ll use the Rockies as our East-West dividing point.”
“Hardly fair, Tracy, that leaves a lot more land for me.”
“Yeah, but the terrain’s easier. Let’s move!”
Meanwhile, in Greenland, the villain chuckles at Dick’s lack of knowledge about the extent of the North American tectonic plate.
I’m not certain which would be more in character for Heathcliff.
Playing an epic rock song (maybe something by Queen) to further express his triumph?
Or something horrifically lame and stupid because he deliberately wants to annoy people?
@TheDiva: On CS – That’s tomorrow, when he and Ol’ One Arm are revealed to be among the crowd and take over the event. ‘Say, you’re just like that one character in my famous comic strip ‘Three O’Clock High’ by me, Batton Thomas! Whatta co-winky-dink! You know, that reminds me of a story about the pen nibs I used to buy…’
@Voshkod: Greenland?!! That settles it, send in the 101st Airborne! We need to claim the 51st state so Tracy has jurisdiction to go in and start blowing up basements to get those hackers! (They have basements in Greenland, right? Eh, who cares…)
@Lauralot: And what’s Wilbur going to do if Dawn doesn’t heed his warning? Pout again? Grieve a dead goldfish again? Stop bathing again? Fake his death again? Give Dawn’s inheritance to a South American dating scammer again? Invite a psycho murderer over again? Okay, maybe Wilbur’s warning is more threatening than I thought.
RMMD-They can’t dine and dash because the only other choice is the hotel restaurant.
MW-“Oh, Tommy. What a pleasant surprise. We were just talking about you.”
Crankshaft-“We didn’t come willingly. You’ve got us held hostage.”
GT: “Marco! Come back!”
Wary Morth:
In order to win over Wilbur, Tommy decides to have his ex cellmate stage a robbery at Casa Weston, whereupon he’d burst in and save the day. Unfortunately he falls over his own feet and knocks himself out, whereupon the ex cellmate has to take him to hospital to get his concussion treated. Wilbur decides he was hallucinating the whole thing and overdoses on mayo. The end.
Murky Tail:
Ol’ catfish was the Gail we called her Big Dream
She saw Happy and licked her lips for cream
Put out the gorilla and Murk came for the ride
Too late cause Gail was already the bride
Protested but it went in and out of Happy’s ear
He didn’t want to listen that much was clear
“Step back dad, for she’s the worst!”
“How dare you! Murk I hope you burst!”
Archie:
Arch, Arch, Arch of the Bungle
Rekt as he can be
Arch, Arch, Arch of the Bungle
Watch out on that sea!
Blondie-“Who cares. Dithers is going to beat me no matter what I do.”
Heathcliff is executing felinedom’s ultimate power move over caninedom. Tormenting the dogs by luxuriating in his freedom, knowing that their instincts will cause them to bark endlessly and helplessly. Even better if the cat is also seeking to annoy his family’s asshole neighbors.
MT: Wait, wasn’t this a Popeye arc back in the 70’s?
Popeye’s father falls in love with a local scammer and are going to be engaged.
Popeye says “No, she just wants your money”
I can’t wait for Mark’s Dad to break up with her, then get sued for “Breaking her heart” and end up with a sham trial, and the scammer bribing one of Mark’s friends as the Judge against them.
Wait…. does Mark even have any friends? I mean seriously here.
@CanuckDownSouth: Senator Ted Stevens reminds us it’s just a connected system of connected “intertubes”.
At least Dick Tracy se
Crankshaft – A gentle joke as comic relief. No, wait – comic relief is used to ease the tension from unremitting tragedy. I’m not sure if it applies to never ending glurge and bullshit.
Frazz – No, it’s the one about Mickey Mouse getting a divorce.
Gil Thorp – Ow! My eyes!
Merrill obviously didn’t use her time off to take drawing lessons.
GoComics is down, so I haven’t seen all of the strips on my reading list. I’ll also obey the commenting rules and not make the comment I wanted to make about the melonheads.
MT: “Mark confronts his father over his near nupitals.”
Come’on Rivera you can do better than that.
“Mark forces his father to forgo the festivities due to being fleeced by a fishy felon.”
MW- (Think “Mother” by Danzig) “Wilbur…gonna take your Dawnie out tonight…gonna show her my world…Not about to see your light…but if you’re gonna fuck Belle Batsfrey…then it can’t be very bright…”
@The Rambling Otter: “Touché Otter”
@UncleJeff: I initially read that as innertubes.
Doesn’t make any less sense…
@MKay: Re RMMD – James Cagney works, too. Now I want to see one twin smash a grapefruit in the other’s face.
@Little Guy: Beatty has certainly done a good job of it, if that’s his intention.
@Liam: Re RMMD – Don’t forget Wanda’s diner.
@Anonymous: Sorry, that was me. I’ll try again…
Dick Tracy apparently has the opposite problem that DC Comics had in the 1970s. An aging creative team trying to stay relevant for a new generation of readers, often embarrassing themselves. The VPN explanation looks like the work of a younger creative team trying to accommodate aging readers lacking technological knowledge. Is there any basis for the syndicates’ apparent assumption that their readership is dominated by, well, Pluggers in age and outlook?
@Tonio: I dunno, but the odd time I have made the mistake of looking at the comments on one of the syndicates’ sites, the average commenter has made the average Plugger look like a Brooklyn hipster.
@Tonio: Is there any basis for the syndicates’ apparent assumption that their readership is dominated Pluggers in age and outlook?
I imagine they just looked at the demographics of newspaper subscribers.
FC: The kids succeed in building the world’s first two-story outhouse.
Crankshaft: I think what I hate most about this strip—like daily, not just today’s—are the smug, knowing, smirks.
Crankshaft-“And this concludes our tour. Be sure to purchase a copy of Larry Dinkle’s biography in the gift shop.”
Slylock Fox:
Reeky: “My sister told me t’ask about a ‘search warrant’. Y’know anything about that?”
Slylock: “Yeah, that I’m not a policeman, so I don’t need one, but things I grab have a funny way of being admissible evidence in court. You’re lucky I’m bothering to talk to you instead of just taking what I want.”
Blondie: Every once in awhile we’re reminded of why Dagwood gave up his family fortune to marry Blondie 90 years ago
Gasoline Alley: Gertie, a black woman of a certain grown-up age, ought not be surprised that a couple of flatlanders ended up in a hillbilly jail.
@brendancalling: So many artists seem to be competing on making the most punchable faces on the comics pages.
Dick Tracy:
“Ubusoft” is obviously a take on the real-world Ubisoft, a French video game publisher whose development teams are based throughout the world and which is known for franchises including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rayman. They haven’t been doing so hot lately, but they’re still one of the biggest names in AAA game publishing. To be honest, at this point the first thing I think about when I hear their name is how their use of aggressive digitial rights management to prevent piracy makes their games a pain in the ass to actually play even if you legitimately own them. Assuming “Ubusoft” is the same, I wouldn’t be surprised if Widescreen is just hacking them so he doesn’t have to go through the rigamarole required to play their games normally. They should try listening to the advice of Gade Mewell from Spigot Corporation: piracy isn’t a price issue, it’s a service issue!
Heathcliff:
The dogs are obviously upset by Heathcliff’s antics, although it’s not exactly clear why. I assume they’re barking at him on general principle because he’s a cat, the traditional enemy of the dog, and he chose this impractically slow means of transportation specifically to taunt them, but it’s also possible they’re angry at his enslavement of four noble gastropods. Either way, if they cared enough to do something about it you’d think they’d leave their conveniently-label “dog run”, since it’s obviously just a short fence that doesn’t enclose them at all.
REX MORGAN M.D.: Wait these girls are drinking now? So they’re adults? Like…they know that they could have just been doing porn if they simply wanted to be swimming in “Jordan’s” money all the time!
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): “Like I said before we can’t dine and dash if we want to come back here. And since there are only three whole restaurants in this town we’re pretty much stuck. What would we do then, cook and eat our OWN food? Go to another town for dinner? (something you think they’d do anyway given that they’re unrepentant con-women perpetually gloating loudly about their scams.)”
@I speak Jive: Merrill obviously didn’t use her time off to take drawing lessons.
Oh, I don’t know, there’s definite improvement over some of her previous strips, which looked like that grade-school art project where you drip watercolors randomly on the page, then draw ink lines to try to turn the splotches into a recognizable picture.
9CL: He wants to be a distinctive musician. Because boinking inside of the grand piano in front of the whole audience isn’t enough. ALL musicians do THAT.
BLONDIE: At least THIS couple only fools around in the privacy of their home…Oh, wait. They left the front door open.
CS: Okay, that cinches it. Ed Crankshaft is officially out of his own strip. Now Harry Dinkle’s the one doing the stupid malapropisms…And Ed just sits there with an idiotic smile plastered on his face. For Pete’s sake, at least go down fighting, man!
FC: Someone needs to call child protective services on Bil. Wait, never mind. This strip probably first ran in the ’70s, when all parents let their young children play with Dad’s hammers and handsaws.
S4th: This ain’t no Back to the Future.
DT:
“They might be North America.”
“Good enough for me and my size 13 Universal Warrant™. Let’s go!”
@Vulpes: I didn’t even realize that about Ubisoft, despite I had been wondering why I had to jump through hoops to play Scott Pilgrim (on my Switch, mind)
And to unlock Knives as a playable character (who is free in this version) I had to go through even more hoops.
Geez Ubisoft, just give me the da** character…
@Tonio: Whenever a newspaper does a comic strip survey and asks for the respondents’ age, the average age is usually above 60.
@RogerBW: Oh my, Dick is going to arrest literally EVERYONE isn’t he?
@brendancalling: It’s even more annoying because Bernice is justifying her laziness with “boo-hoo I’m an introvert, I’m literally incapable of going out and doing anything more interesting than reading PG-13 romance novels and talking to my goldfish,” and doing so while she’s on the god-damn Internet, a place literally teeming with socially reserved people talking to one another about their lives and interests and random nonsense. Your life isn’t boring because you’re a shy wallflower, Bernice, it’s boring because you are the dullest person on the planet.
MW – Wilbur, even those of us without crotchfruit know that making a friend forbidden onlu makes the kid want that friend more. You have just become Tommy Beedie’s wingman. Schmuck.
MARY WORTH: “I just don’t want any bad influences around you. Anyway I’m off to bang mentally unbalanced women before giving them my address and social security number The ‘daddy issues’ I’m giving you will keep you company. See you!”
GA: for those of us who followed last week’s anniversary arc, today’s strip is so cute. Will they make up an adventure story to impress Gertie?
@TheDiva: The thing is that Bernice (and probably the Evans’ as well) is pretending that this is a story about “doing what you want to do regardless of what others think of it.” The problem: that’s not what’s happening here. That is what everyone else is doing and Bernice is obviously envious and sulking about it because she’s an obnoxious passive-aggressive troll who hates everyone else enjoying life around her. And the rest of the arc is Bernice (with guest appearance by fellow boring sad-sack, Ox) trying to spin their dull uninteresting existence as some kind of “superior” lifestyle.
Yow! We got a Rex Morgan Big Hand! How long has it been, they used to show up weekly, didn’t they? I was afraid the new “AI”-influenced style would revert Rex Morgan Art to the median, and we’d never see Big Hands again.
Dick Tracy: Given a lot of current issues about government/media overreach and censorship plus the destruction of privacy online and transformation of social media into basically a glorified propaganda arm, it’s an interesting but unsurprising decision by Dick Tracy to come down against things like VPNs. Dick definitely strikes me as the kind of person who’d say “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” unironically and think it sounds noble and not creepy.
Heathcliff: This might be the most realistic reaction to Heathcliff’s shit this comic has ever done.
DT: Dick: How’s it going. Sam: pretty good, we’ve narrowed it down to one maybe two continents.
JP: This comic is written using plot pendulum. On one extreme is a tense, violent spy action thriller with international espionage and a lot of slam-bang adventure. The other extreme has a wordy, long conversation based examination of life, loves and society in the early 21st century USA. Somewhere in the middle there are some law stories. Right now we are way over on the wordy conversations about life end after swerving hard into the violent world of Judge Parker.
Phantom: Vladimir Putin did a spit take this morning upon seeing the Wambesi deal with the drone using just their hand eye coordination, and finely honed javelin skills. He demands General Gerasimov contact the Bangallan ambassador to ask for 1000 of their finest javelin men.
RMMD: Branching point ahead – the fembot girls try to dine and dash but run into June and Rex, they pay but are recognized by June and Rex who are on a date night, they leave without incident and tomorrow they discover they are both suddenly deaf
@Pozzo: Whoopie. Ha ha.
@treetown: “June and Rex who are on a date night”
That would involve intimate feelings from Rex.
Anyone remember waaay back, when Josh used to joke that Rex was gay before viewing him as an anti-social shut-in who hates everything and everyone?
Heathcliff is a lovesome thing? What rot!
Weed plot,
Scum pool,
Old pot,
Snail-shiny stool
In pieces; yet the fool
Contends that snails are not –
Not snails! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I see their trails!
‘Tis very sure my garden’s full of snails!
DT: I’m glad she’s explaining this to Sam and not Dick. If Dick’s eyes are capable of glazing over, they would at the first mention of VPNs. Eventually, he’d say, “Look, lady, who do I shoot? Just tell me where to aim the gun and I’ll aim it.”
‘cliff: “That bothers me. Am I going to do anything about it? No. Could I do anything about it? Probably, yes. Wait, am I part of the problem?”
@2+2=7: The “mentally unbalanced” comment reminds me of how during the Belle arc, multiple people (including myself) repeatedly pointed out that if Belle really was so severely mentally ill and had to be remanded into the care of her brother, than there’s a pretty huge chance she wasn’t in a fit state of mind to consent to anything and therefore if her and Wilbur got physical, he literally raped her. And instead of challenging this notion, Moy and Brigman just had Belle act and look even more “cray-cray” and made the whole thing infinitely worse by having her brother look like Wilbur for some reason, raising more horrible questions.
That whole story was so stomach-churning, especially looking back. Clearly, Moy should never go near any subject matter that requires a sensitive, socially aware touch.
@Old School Allie Cat: Leaving that obvious fact aside, Dawn is a grown-ass woman (even if it’s sometime easy to forget because of her behavior). Wilbur literally has NO power or authority over her anymore, nor should he. He can bleet and whine all he wants, but he can’t make Dawn do or not do anything and merely trying at all shows him as a pathetic creep with a staggeringly unhealthy relationship towards his daughter. It’s stupid and misogynistic that the comic seems to think otherwise.
@Joshua K.: Oof.
@Ken: You are right – I concede that there has been some improvement – we can actually tell that the female in the last panel is laughing. We would know even without the huge HA HA hanging in the air. However, both characters still have the same face, and if there were more people there, they would look exactly the same. Not enough improvement.
@2+2=7: I also noticed that they are drinking wine, which means that they are adults. Which also means that they will be charged as adults and not juveniles. I don’t know if faking playing a violin is a felony or a misdemeanor.
@Rover Berkeley: Re FC – It is terrifying to think of Jeffy handling a hammer. On the positive side, he’ll end up smashing his own hand instead of PJ’s skull.
@2+2=7: I love that we’ve reached a point where it’s genuinely impossible to tell what ages any of the characters are supposed to be until we’re told outright or shown them doing something like drinking. Especially in the case of Sarah, who use to look like a twenty-something’s head crudely stapled onto a child’s body but now post-random-age-up looks like a kid’s head attached to a twenty year old’s body.
@brendancalling: Major agree. The people of the Funky-Verse have absolutely NOTHING to be smug about.
@Tonio: Hope Heathcliff enjoys his freedom as an outdoor cat while he can before he gets eaten by the local coyotes.
SlyF – The hot sun beating in the yellow sky? The victim in a t-shirt. The heat-stressed flower on the window sill. NOTHING in this tableau invites us to imagine a cool morning on which steam might condense on the shower window. So let’s just assume that Stu doesn’t know how exhaust fittings work, and say that that’s the catalytic converter right there under the sink. William of Occam can spend some time sleeping peacefully in his grave.
Gotta respect Dick Tracy for “It’s a different type that obscures more information than normal” the age old writers shorthand for “wanted to incorporate real technology, did some research that undermined my basic assumptions, decided to go ahead with it anyway”
DT – JK Rowling demonstrated a better understanding of VPN tunneling in Half Blood Prince than we are seeing here.
@ectojazzmage: What?!? That storyline was a capstone in Moy’s artistic achievements! I mean who else has the sheer talent to do a tale about a man’s would-be girlfriend trying to shamelessly murder the guy’s daughter in a fit of psychotic jealousy, and yet, somehow, make the man the least sympathetic person in the story. That…that’s just pure skill right there. (Hilariously, I suspect that from Moy’s point-of-view, the ending was a clumsy, inept attempted to give the “Belle” character some “nuance” that backfired badly! Honestly (and ironically enough) she would have been better off just going the Rex Morgan M.D. route and make her a one-note supervillain who would give monologues that she was doing this simply because she’s calculating and EEEE-VIL! That would have been cliche, but it would have bought about way less Unfortunate Implications for us to think about.)
Crank: I’m torn. On the one hand I can’t believe this nonsense still isn’t over, after last week’s
triumphant finalething that was vaguely shaped like an ending. On the other hand, as long as Batty’s doing this nonsense, he’s not doing Batton Thomas nonsense, and this is very slightly less intolerable.Why am I still reading this strip? It’s not even fun to snark at very often these days.
Curtis: Goodness, the climax of that hot dog eating contest sure does sound exciting – if only there was some way we could have seen it!
DT: Fritz-Ann, two weeks ago: Unlike a normal VPN, this one masked their identity and exact location.
Fritz-Ann, today, after someone hastily passed Costello a note: Unlike a normal VPN, this one masked … stuff a normal VPN doesn’t, I guess. But not what continent they’re from, because this storyline has already been written on the assumption VPNs don’t do that and we can’t change it now.
FC: At first I thought “I would not trust the Keane Kids with grown-up tools.” Then I remembered I don’t have to live with them.
JP: Hooboy, time for another round of “Kat is utterly awful”. Will it still be “Kat is utterly awful but Ronnie loves her anyway, for some reason”? Will Ces remember the particularly stupid angle of “‘What does she see in her?’ wonders Ronnie’s straight best friend who looks exactly like Kat”? (I almost wrote “just happens to look exactly like Kat”, but no, Ronnie and Kat only met because she looks like Neddy.)
MW: “Heed my warning”? Listen up, Dawnie, the Oracle of Mayo has spoken!
Phantom: I would like to apologise for suggesting on Saturday that Vindicta-Mollusk-Musk sending autonomous drones against guys with spears was a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Obviously, I should have realised that, by Phantom rules, this was actually woefully underpowered. The only thing that can stop a good guy with a spear is a bad guy with a spear!
Pluggers: It occurs to me that, unlike many past strips that have direct references to hair-loss, you’d have to be really deep into Pluggers lore to understand that today’s joke hinges on reading the beast-man with a thick layer of shaggy fur as being bald.
It also occurs to me that I understood this, so that’s depressing.
S4th: “What if we accelerated to 88 miles an hour? That’s a thing, right?”
“For God’s sake, Hil, that was 1985. Haven’t we taught you anything?”
SH: Look, I know that for contrived shapeshifter reasons Jenna and Doreen have to be the kind of pet-sitters who accept that the cat can make her own way there and that they’ll never see Pam and Alex pick the animals up. But maybe don’t draw attention to their obvliviousness so soon after bulk of the storyline, where Alex/Browser had a fireworks-related panic attack and no humans checked on him? “They were no trouble at all, by which I mean we completely forgot they were there!”
I love that joke.
And go ahead and make your comment on the melonheads.
@I speak Jive: Re: Rex Morgan M.D.: The hilarious thing is that these wine-drinking baddies somehow look younger than “Shorty & the Beanpole”, who, you may recall, are tweens. (Also I’ve completely reversed my stance on this story and now side with June. These ladies should be arrested…for the crime of utter being utterly pathetic. Like ladies once you reach that age, you might as well just do a bikini car-wash and call it a day (has Cinemax taught these girls, nothing? Has the state of the education system really fallen that far?)
@Joshua K.: There are also far fewer responses than there used to be. I remember my local newspaper doing those kind of surveys in the 80s when I was still a teenager. My dad (a fellow comics enthusiast) and I would submit our choices. They’d print the results in the paper, and there’d be thousands of respondents. Now it’s more like 50.
@I speak Jive: I know this is a hobby-horse I keep banging on about, but I genuinely believe that saying Rachel Merrill can’t draw is giving her too much credit. If you check out her other work, this is not the best she can do. This is just the best she thinks it’s worth bringing to Gil Thorp. (Or, if you’re feeling charitable, the best she can do with a daily deadline.)
Dick Tracy – Dick Tracy is pro-police state, thus opposed to people using VPN’s to disguise what they do online.
Which is mostly porn.
Specifically a site on the dark web of Dick Tracy Rule 34 porn, where the entire rogue’s gallery of villains has had their way with Dick. The Neo-Chicago PD will not stand for it!
Unfortunately for them, this diagram of how a VPN works has also been incorporated into the Rule 34 site.
Heathcliff – Heathcliff has been made aware of how annoyed people get by slow walkers on the sidewalk. Let this be a warning about the consequences of petty complaints!
@Horace Broon: I love the “Oracle of Mayo!”
Like Josh, I write about VPNs as a day job, so I’m qualified to say that Dick Tracy has gotten it absolutely correct here. The main point of a VPN is to keep evil electrons from breaking into your safe internet tunnel. For that, you need to put some confusing arrows on either end of the tunnel, so the electrons don’t know which way to go. It’s also vital to have a secured network at both ends, so you go in a perfect closed loop and never see any websites (which are known hotbeds of cybercrime). Finally, and this is critical, you are only allowed to use a VPN based on the same continent as you, so get wrecked, Australia.
@I speak Jive: re RMMD — it’s a capital crime in this universe. And June is a hanging judge.
HEATHCLIFF: I have enough on my mind without having to worry about overworked slugs. Don’t do this again, Heathcliff!
FG: Mama Hawkwoman is asking her daughter the typical future mom-in-law question, “And just what kind of job does Bok expect to get with a liberal arts degree?”
Here’s my liberal arts major joke:
The science major asks, “Can it be done?”
The engineering major asks, “Can it be manufactured?”
The business major asks, “Can it be marketed profitably?”
The liberal arts major asks, “Do you want fries with that?”
DT: That’s right, Josh, gently mock those of us who read today’s strip and squinted briefly at that drawing and thought “what’s the use, I’ll never understand this shit.” Though maybe there’s only one of us left, and it’s time to envision a really pathetic short video called THE TECH OMEGA WOMAN. [waves cane]
@matt w: Those lines are slack! The slugs can’t be exerting any force!
___________________
They’re slackers.
LUANN: Making it look like you’ve been engaging in indecent activity with a dog is certainly an interesting choice, Bernice.
Dick Tracy further examines the diagram. “So…this is a uterus, right?”
@Little Guy: Ernie Anderson did the next-episode promos for ST:TNG for the first few seasons, too. “Next time on Staaaaar Trek: The Next Generation!”
@treetown:
#92. PHANTOM: As I remember, Mr. Freaky sent at least four drones . Have the guards lost their only two spears?
@Bryan: Bwahaha!
What A Frazzhole!: “This is ‘Frazzhole’,everything’s done half-assed here,Caulfield!”
@Guillermo el chiclero: And the agriculture major asks “Can it be subsidized?” (That’s my rural-Iowa joke.)
@Guillermo el chiclero:
#114. Guillermo, your point on liberal arts degrees we’ll taken– but who else can ask about fries in French, Spanish, Mandarin, or Ancient Greek. Counter service is a skilled profession.
Have you ever read the he book where only a liberal arts grad had the breadth of knowledge to save humanity on a spaceship? Might have been “End of the World News”. Generalists are needed too.
@Horace Broon: I’m kind of feeling charitable. I think she is capable given time. But a daily schedule? She just ends up flailing around, drawing bizarre chins and hugely distended limbs and lumpen masses of human flesh. If it were a single 3 panel strip every month, I’m sure she;d be more than adequate.
Late Thread Cuisine: Someone claims these are edible. I’m not so sure.
Family Circus: PJ’s smiling because he knows within the next two minutes, that two meter pole’s gonna be shoved up Dolly’s tattling ass.
Mark Trail: I love Mark’s expression in the final panel. So dismissive, so mean girl.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: It was a tossup between that one and “But you fuck one goat…”
Shortened and toned down:
They’ll end up tearing down the house and painting their kiddie wading pool blue.
@2+2=7: The twins also dress like teenagers in 1962, with jumpers and turtlenecks. I know that Beatty isn’t a fashion artist, but this looks like the last days of Apartment 3-G.
@Horace Broon: I didn’t look up her other artwork, but I have read that she’s done artwork that is good. However, her work in Gil Thorp is execrable and shows contempt for the strip itself, the syndicate who is paying her, and the people who are reading it.
@Majicou: #119: Whenever “The Carol Burnett Show” did their soap opera sketch, As the Stomach Turns, Ernie Anderson did the narrator role. He also acted in bit parts in several of their sketches. “America’s Funniest Home Videos” still uses his voice over intros, as a tribute long after his death. In those old Mercury car ads on TV, “At the sign of the cat!”, that was Anderson.
@Baja Gaijin: Cuisine – they might be edible, but no one with any sense would even consider eating them.
However, I can’t see any repulsive ingredients in that dish – it just looks too bizarre to eat.
@I speak Jive: A jumper with a turtleneck is a signature Edda Burber van Hosen ensemble. Keep these two away from any and all grand pianos.
@131 I speak Jive: Below is the translation of the press release:
That’s the best when it’s told by Paul McCartney.
A few years ago when Cal Raleigh of the Mariners was at Target Field the first time, they put on the scoreboard that his nickname is the Big Dumper, leading to the easy line, “But you plug one toilet . . . ” Thank you, Mr. McCartney
@Ukulele Ike: Yeah, I did think of that, too. I remember Edda wearing plain jumpers and turtlenecks. With her matchless beauty she can wear anything.
@Baja Gaijin: Spicy? Nope. Curry? NOPE.
I can’t eat spicy food, and I loathe curry. I won’t be going near that.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Paul McCartney!? I’d love to hear him tell the Mickey’s divorce joke, too.
@135 I speak Jive: Yeah, about that. Japanese curry is not spicy. It’s rather sweet. But it’s still curry. This time, in weenie form!
@Baja Gaijin: As someone who has sought out the best butter chicken poutine in city X (one with the butter chicken rich enough that cheese curds *are* included and seem downright at home), I applaud the attempt at fusion cuisine and would absolutely try it. The success might hinge on just what cheese is sealing the top.
@Baja Gaijin: Keema curry is a spicy concoction of ground meat, onion, chiles, garlic, tomato, punchy seasonings. Pork sausage is a frankfurter.
What you got there, you got an array of South Asian chili dogs.
The melted cheese is intriguing. I’ll definitely try one. Three, if you are offering cold beer.
@Baja Gaijin: I knew that looked spicy-dangerous. Thanks for confirming.
@I speak Jive: I wonder if you and I are very distant cousins and share a no-spice-nope-nope-nope chain of genes as part of our DNA.
@Poteet: I can’t eat spicy food because of a medical issue. It’s a really big NOPE for me.
I hadn’t heard the goat/sheep joke, but thankfully YouTube has Sir McCartney telling it. For your listening pleasure
I genuinely love the fact that the current Heathcliff writers — possible growing tired of the typical unoriginal, bland legacy comic it had become — just decided to make the comic batshit crazy!