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Gasoline Alley, 8/25/07

Wow, so who would have guessed that Slim’s descent into madness would have concluded with, you know, an actual descent into actual, clinically diagnosed madness? I have to say that while the recent Slim vs. the Basketball Playing Youth Of Today has been totally demented, it’s at least been kind of interesting, unlike the previous year or so of Gasoline Alley, so I sort of hope that they keep up with the wackiness. If nothing else, every year or so the gentle, good-humored domestic drama and hillbilly-dialect chuckles should be punctuated by Slim’s escape from the asylum, with hundreds of comically inept cops crawling everywhere in a failed attempt to keep him from killing again.

Dick Tracy, 8/25/07

I haven’t attempted to grapple with plot of Dick Tracy on this blog for about eight weeks; just take my word for it when I say that for about seven of those weeks, the same thing barely happened over and over again, then all of the sudden this week all sorts of things started happening, none of which made any sense if you thought about them for more than about thirty seconds. However, I feel that the dialog in today’s first panel — “Tracy! They know we know! They’re ramming us!” — stands on its own as a wonderful little dollop of poetic nonsense. I hope tomorrow one of the bad guys says “Gretchen! They know we know they know! We’re ramming them!” And then it could just go on like that pretty much indefinitely.

Also, in panel three, this is the second time that the Baron has arrived at the Pentagon via cab, and I have no reason to believe that it’s going to be the last.

Spider-Man, 8/25/07

Spider-Man continues to indulge its obsession with crumbling masonry. Perhaps the creators have decided that a renewed focus on our woefully neglected infrastructure is more important than providing the “thrills” and “excitement” that the masses expect from their superhero fare.

Also, I have to say that there’s something poignant about the modesty of the Shocker’s ambitions in panel one. He knows that there’s no chance of breaking into the big supervillain scene in New York or DC; he’d just be happy if people in San Francisco and LA, and maybe even Portland and Seattle, hear “the Shocker” and think not “obscene hand gesture” but “that mattress-wearing weirdo who robbed a bank.”

B.C., 8/25/07

Also, Clumsy, you’re not … bald? I mean, you’re not, right? As near as I can tell? I know we’re just plugging new jokes into old art, but couldn’t we at least have the same person picking out the jokes and the art?

Wizard of Id, 8/25/07

Ho ho ho! Id is an Orwellian police state, so dominated by the Panopticon-style omnipresence of its security apparatus that it resembles nothing so much as a vast gulag! Ah, whimsy!

Garfield, 8/25/07

This is pretty much the funniest Garfield that’s appeared in weeks. It’s about vomiting.