Streaming doesn’t count, people on streaming shows don’t have souls
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Dick Tracy, 11/12/25
New Dick Tracy storyline, everybody! This one involves (a) a guy named “Rojo Ozob,” and (b) a sheriff who accidentally drove over a cliff. OR WAS IT AN ACCIDENT? Well, Dick Tracy seems to think so, based on this news story he’s looking at on his phone (?). Honestly, Dick is a big city cop, he doesn’t have time to worry about sheriffs out in the sticks, where there are cliffs everywhere you can just drive off of, like there aren’t even any proper guardrails. Get your shit together, country folk, Dick has got urban crimes to keep track of.
The Lockhorns, 11/12/25
Ah, an extremely rare Lockhorns where both Leroy and Loretta are smiling! Truly the one thing that brings these two together is some petty gripe about the world that they express through an elaborate act-out.
Alice, 11/12/25
Yeah, Alice, don’t lie to the kid! When you turn off the TV the people inside die. They die and their souls are immediately transported to hell. The only way to save them from eternal torment is by always watching your favorite shows!
81 replies to “Streaming doesn’t count, people on streaming shows don’t have souls”
Blondie Mashup: I’m sorry, no. The linked mashup is a far more believable scenario.
Hi and Lois: Let’s see. Hi and Lois routinely leave their baby in an empty stimulus-free room filled with skin cancer-causing electromagnetic radiation and now we find they leave said baby in a bathtub full of non-drown resistant water all by herself. How much life insurance do these parents of the year have on her?
lol, those do not look like the Lockhorns
Hi and Lois-An optimist would say that half the water is in the tub.
RMMD-Wait until the book becomes an airport bestseller and hold out for the money.
Happy Leroy always looks off. Like, that dozen eggs became a good idea after some awesome rips from the bong he bought just an hour before kind of off. And now he TOTALLY wants some eggs.
Alice:
“You know the description from the Metallica song ‘Enter Sandman,’ Niecey? — well, that’s pretty much what they do.”
Lockhorns:
When Loretta thinks about it a little and calls Leroy out over the banality of the “gift,” he’s going to have egg on his face. Literally.
Rojo Ozob, huh? At last we get that red, somehow-backwards Mexican clown villain Dick Tracy readers have craved?! And by “craved,” I naturally mean “Christ, that name is dumb.”
FC: Billy’s kamikaze mission gets off to a rough start.
DT:
“I’ve fantasized about running over that annoying Cliff Richard myself with my car. But I didn’t think that you could kill yourself by running over him.”
RMMD: Break up your heteronormative pairing? What would Mary Worth say??
DT: ‘He was last seen with a white-haired woman wearing a mauve cowl-neck sweater before his car was found at the bottom of the place the locals dubbed Kelrast Kurve several years back after a similar incident…’
And what if the people on the TV are already sleeping when you turn it off? Does that wake them up, to go to sleep? This is too much. Looks like a brandy breakfast for me!
Lockhorns: Depending on where you live, Leroy either sprung for white eggs or didn’t spring for brown eggs.
DT: I can’t tell you how relieved I was to read that it was Sheriff Scott Sommer who went over the cliff in his car, and not Sheriff Dan Stober who went over the cliff on his horse!
MW: “Funny bird! Want to poop on Ian’s pillow? Ha ha ha ha!”
RMMD: Since it appears that Augie’s murder porn is finally going to bring him literary success, he won’t care if Summer dumps him. She’s served her purpose.
DtM: Might as well just read “The Bad Seed” to him. It’s only a matter of time.
H&L: I’m no expert, but even I know that you don’t leave a baby (especially a 71 year-old baby) alone in a freakishly huge bathtub. I mean, what’s WITH that tub? Where do they live, The Breakers?
SF: It will be fun watching Ronan reduce Ted Forth to an emotional sea slug over the next two weeks.
9CL: For his own sanity, Alistair’s mommy should probably lock him away about now.
Is Dick Tracy not a little suspicious that the entire text of the article is redacted?
Alice: I’ll confess that when I was a kid, I thought commercials were there so the actors could take a bathroom break.
DT So the suspect is ‘Red Bozo’? A communist clown? Shit, for the first time in awhile I am interested in where this is going…
Lhns It’s been obvious for a while that there two aren’t humans exactly, but today provides a little more insight into their biology. So far we can describe them as small oviparous homonids lacking teeth, probably an adaptation to the rocky crags where they evolved, preying in seabird nests.
DT: I’m hoping Dick will connect Rojo Ozob to the death of Aldo Kelrast.
DT: Dick smells something fishy: “A real newspaper would print: ‘Sheriff Dies after car goes over cliff’. What are you trying to pull, Bub!?”
@Baja Gaijin: Yeah, I looked at that before the strip and was like “But where’s the mashup?”
C’mon, man, you couldn’t draw two more eggs?
@els: Hey, man, it’s a ten-pack.
@Baja Gaijin: Is that a giant brain on the platter? Oh, no! Dagwood’s become a zombie!
Lockhorns: Egg prices have been steadily decreasing. They’ve missed the trend again.
The Lockhorns have finally figured out the secret to a happy marriage: triangulating around your shared contempt for other people and/or market forces. I would not have guessed avian flu would make a good family therapist, yet here we are.
DT: So if “Ozob” is clearly going to be an evil clown, does that mean that “Somner” was an asset of the Ghanian/Estonian rental platform Renmo?
Also The Lockhorns: Trump take egg. Leroy bring egg. Coincidence? Probably!
@Guts Dozier:
We’re through the looking glass here, people.
Lockhorns: Just look at those bedroom eyes. You don’t want to know what Leroy and Loretta are going to do with those eggs.
Alice: I love to conduct conversations across a healthy, socially-distanced 10 feet gap. Although can you blame them? Alice’s niece’s eyes are falling off her body! No wonder her aunt doesn’t dare get too close.
Aldo Kelrast, man.
He can shave off his moustache, change his name, move to somewhere in the country and take a job in a new field, but he’ll *still* go off a cliff to his death after falling for a meddling biddy and being choreographically yelled at by her cultists.
Fate is a bitch, I tell you.
Did Scott Somner have an unhealthy obsession with an old biddy at a local condo complex? Any cop worth their salt knows that’s the first question you need to ask when someone drives off a cliff.
***
“Why didn’t use his heat ray vision blast to get out of the car before it crashed?”
“No, this was Scott Somner. You’re thinking of Scott Summers, and um actually…”
***
Except for Gordon Ramsay. He feeds on actors from cancelled scripted shows and reality contest losers.
Dick Tracy: “What’s that you say? You have ‘evidence’ before you secure an indictment? You say you wait for indictments before executing rough street justice? You say your suspects are not grotesquely deformed, with too on-the-nose names? My, my, my. To each their own, I suppose.” [Caressing pistol trigger lovingly] “I sure hope he turns out to be a clown, though.”
@Baja Gaijin:
They never discovered astronomy more modern than circa 1950 and are training the spawn from birth to survive high exposure to sunlight and permanent immersion in water. They think that way she’ll be the first human on Venus.
DT: Yeah, looks like we’re getting the Buford Pusser story, only stuck in the Cuisinart and given a few whirls — the sheriff here is the murderee instead of the murderer.
”Rojo Ozob” secretly turns out to be Mojo Jojo, nemesis to the Powerpuff Girls. Look for a guest appearance from Tennessee Jed.
Alice: After my father-in-law died, he was cremated and his ashes came to the memorial service. Someone made the mistake of telling our young nieces that Grandpa was in the box, causing them great alarm and curiosity. “How did Grandpa get in the box?!” one of them asked. “Magic,” said my mother-in-law, not skipping a beat. It worked.
@Ukulele Ike: I am Mooojo Jojo!!
“Except for Gordon Ramsay…” Every name I considered is a British man. I was also thinking of Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan, both of whom are much worse than Ramsay, but I went with the one most associated with food.
The Scott Summers power is a tip of the hat to Gail Simone, the internet’s greatest actually fun troll.
“Murders? The reports said Somner’s death was an accident”
“We believe someone voluntarily killed him”
“So what? I always tell my coroner to count those as ‘accidents’!”
Leroy and Loretta quarrel a lot, but there is something they agree on 100%: they prefer Loretta’s eggs to be unfertilised
@21 matt w: The author totally missed the boat on this strip. Why would Daggy sit so close to one end of the bench if not to make room for food?
@24 Lord Flatulence: It’s a Thanksgiving ham I took from Family Circus. Criss-cross cut with cloves at the intersections because that was the thing to do in the 60’s to class up the ham. I guess. I wasn’t there. Jeffy thought the cloves were thumb tacks.
@34 Ukranazi Stepan: That tracks.
DT: “Rojo Ozob” – okay I guess this was last moment switch when the creators saw the NY Times Connection puzzle. The other choices were como, dojo, yolo, and bogo. Should have used “Rojo Gato”? Is DT picking up the 1920-1930+ British habit of bashing johnny foreigner?
MW: At least the parrot appreciates Tobey not just for her unusual mouth.
RMMD: um, did you bother to finish the book? are you just going to confront Augie without know what the book is about? it might turn out to be a nice little cozy murder mystery which leads to 3-4 sequels and a Netflix pickup as streaming show and some real money. Or you can just flip out over the first 2-3 chapters and let Augie meet a nice rep from the publishers who he can hook up with and lead a much happier stress free life.
JP: Charlotte has finally gotten someone to listen to her. They didn’t listen when she pointed out to her parents that there were strange people walking by their house before all of the bad stuff happened. That the mail delivery person was not the regular carrier, that on the bad stuff day, there were garbage trucks blocking both ends of the street but it wasn’t pick up day.
@els: shrinkflation!
Edge City, GoComics-style: I’ve never gone deer hunting either, but now I know to pack several changes of clothes and a couple heads of garlic.
Bad Machinery: I needed to read this three or four ties to decipher the Geordie slang, and I am seriously disappointed. I wanted to see Charlotte as a curly.
Yeah, petty. Did you say this out loud before publishing?
It’s unsurprising that Leroy wouldn’t spring for a full dozen.
@A Grave Mind: I expected Baja Gaijin to pick up on that immediately, maybe he’s just too horrified to notice?
@pugfuggly: dangit, I meant ‘ovivore’, not ‘oviparous’. I’ve lost my ecology street cred…
DtM – Adam Mansbach’s “Go The F*ck to Sleep” is required reading at the Mitchell household.
LH – Can we bring back the scowls please? Loretta has the smile of a Muppet that had an unfortunate incident with a serger, and it’s pure nightmare fuel.
Alice:
“Remember the shadows from Plato’s allegory of the cave? It’s like that only with electrons.”
“Oh! So that’s what they mean by ‘man cave’.”
Dick Tracy: Know I love about contemporary Dick Tracy? strips. Consistency! The headline here manages to make even the most horrific events seem boring, and “we have evidence to the contrary” keeps things so vague that readers don’t really learn anything new.
On a slightly novel note, “Ozob” is “Bozo” spelled backwards, so I predict Rojo Ozob is some sort of red clown. Maybe a communist since Mamdani’s election is bringing the Red Scare into the 21st century? Let’s find out together!
Dustin Phew, they almost made it through a full minute of pleasant conversation without sarcastic sniping.
@pugfuggly: I was kinda getting into the whole Loretta Lockhorn IS Henrietta Beak vibe of your original suggestion.
You’re a Plugger if you attribute your dementia to the supernatural.
Alice : is lying because she knows the person inside her TV, Samara Morgan, NEVER sleeps.
However, despite the seven days having run out, Alice is still alive because her monstrous appearance :
a) scares Samara into not attacking her.
b) makes Samara thinks she already got her
(that was a thing, right? The people who died to the Ring curse were all messed-up looking afterwards (but less than Alice looks normally)************
Dick Tracy : “What was fishy about the accident that made you think it was murder?” “He was wearing his old football helmet from his high school day, with a piece of paper that had “I donate my brain to science to combat CTE” written on it… but not in HIS handwriting.” “Huh, just like that case with the high school coach in Ohio a couple of years back.” “Yeah, but that was his wife, for the insurance money.”
************
Slylock Fox : Which two images are the same? Images 1 and 2, which represent Rachel Rabbit taking a selfie with Slylock after he apprehended Shady Shrew. In image 3, the culprit was Reeky Rat, and in image 4, Slick Smitty.
DT – I don’t know if this is pertinent, but as I understand it, our new governmental policy is all the guardrails are coming down….
Shlockhorns – And remember – it’s not an expiration date – it’s simply “best” if used by. Well, when did the Shlockhorns ever get the best, anyway….
Alice – No TV – no synchronistic connection to our collective cosmic consciousness. No more of the good life in the wonderful family of humanity – yer on yer own, baby….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Anonymous:
Alice is still alive because … :
a) scares Samara into not attacking her….
d) Samara’s sister, Sarah Morgan, has dominion over comics characters
In re Alice: I am pretty sure my dog thinks that whatever he sees on screens are trapped inside the devices with those screens. For instance, I’m pretty sure he thinks that when my daughter FaceTimes from her dorm room, that she is in my wife’s iPhone as he’ll start smelling it. Indeed, he does react negatively whenever anyone takes a picture of him or, well, anything. I think he is afraid he might get sucked into the screen as well.
Leroy’s so cheap he bought Loretta only ten eggs instead of a dozen.
Okay, this is seriously the only time I’ll be this asshole, but Vic usually posts great shit, so I’ve snapped. Previous posts, guys! Please at least scroll! Next person to make a red clown joke or point out it’s 10 eggs gets hit with a sack of doorknobs. “Don’t have time?” You’re posting in a snark contest about crappy funnies. Who are you kidding?
Phew. I’m done, and will go back to being clearly the coolest person ever, now.
9CL – So, it turns out that endlessly c*ck teasing your fiancee (which you refer to as “torture”) can have deleterious effects on a couple’s relationship.
Who would have imagined that something like sex would turn out to be a big deal in a relationship??
Gil Thorp: Thanks to the “Girls’ Athletes Protection Act” a Texan shows up to inspect the team’s genitals.
Zits is created by two guys who are 70. They’re writing about high schoolers when they know more about Pluggers.
MW This is great until funny bird mimics Pornhub sounds.
FC: PJ has seen your flight simulator training and is getting a head start on the evacuation, Captain Billy.
“Well, they go to work on someone else’s television. When you turn on Sesame Street or The Wire, all the actors get right into role and do the show live. When they’re done, they jump into someone else’s television and do the same thing!”
“Well, how come they’re always right there when I turn on the TV and not in someone else’s TV?”
“Because the entirety of the universe revolves around you first, dear. Remember that when your parents tell you not to do something.”
@A Grave Mind: “Everybody posts, nobody reads.”
Dick Tracy: “Brojo” is slang for a self-development community for men (it combines “bro” and “dojo”). And “Rojo Ozob” is an anagram for Zoo Brojo. So it’s clear that this sheriff got mixed up in a manosphere cult modeled after the most masculine zoo animals. And if you want to find out who killed him, look for someone dancing around a campfire with a silverback gorilla, an alpha male lion, and a honey badger boar.
Alice: For people in the TV, heaven is an Emmy-winning prestige drama. Purgatory is coming back for endless syndicated reruns. And hell is being on “All’s Fair” with Kim Kardashian.
Alice: (On what Josh said) I guess hypothetically the same can be said for videogames?
*Thinks back to Wreck-It-Ralph where when an arcade machine shuts down, anyone inside (who doesn’t evacuate to the surge protector or another game in time) literally does get wiped out for good.*
OH MY GOD! HE’S RIGHT!
SHERIFF KILLED WHEN CAR GOES OVER CLIFF – Negative Headline
Car Destroyed When Goes Over Cliff – Passive Headline
Cliff Intact After Sheriff’s Car Goes Over It – Positive Headline
@Guy Nerdlinger:
Maybe, but gadzooks it seems out of control today.
Alice: How do we know she’s not lying? This is Alice, after all. The people in the television could be tiny aliens enslaved for human entertainment. The television itself could be an alien. This could all be a fever dream Pablo Picasso had during the wild days of Les Années Folles in France. Anything’s possible!
DT: So, we’ve got a guy who’s Buford Pusser who’s investigating the suspicious auto accident death of a sheriff…who’s also Buford Pusser? Maybe this Ozob guy is the part of Buford Pusser who shot his wife.
@BigTed: Yeah, I always really liked Glenn Close, so it’s a shame that I (and so many others) will never watch “All’s Fair” which could seriously impact her career for the worst.
(But she chose to act alongside Kim Kardashian so…)
Alice: What would happen if the people on TV turned US off?
Alice – Which is a euphemism for what really happens. They fuck. Each other. Constantly and interchangeably. This is Hollywood, kid. You’re too young to understand this now, but it won’t be long before curiosity leads you to flip through the supermarket pages of People and the National Enquirer and all will be revealed.
@Dennis Jimenez: #57: re-DT: If you’ve ever driven the roads on the mountainous western half of Colorado, there are no guardrails, despite the switchbacks and sharp hairpin turns. Why? Guardrails would hinder the snowplows from doing their job. Apparently Colorado prioritizes keeping the roads clear for the hoards of ski tourists over public safety.
DT: SHERIFF KILLED AFTER CAR GOES OVER CLIFF sounds like the guy didn’t die from the crash–assuming he was even in the car to begin with–but was “offed” by a ne’er-do-well after the fact.
CS: Say, is that the tail of a classic two seat Ford Thunderbird peeking out in panel one, next to Ed’s blue shitbox?
9CL: This strip has officially gone cuckoo bananas.
MW: I’m pretty sure it takes more than two repetitions to get a parrot to, well, parrot. The plot must depend on it repeating something out of context. I’m hoping Charterstoned had it right, though not expecting Moy to go quite that far with the double entendres.
@Baja Gaijin: That poor ham! I hope it wasn’t bone-in.
C’shaft: “Why, it’s like some cosmic force decided I was suddenly good at music despite no previous evidence of it!”
Dustin: The effort the characters of Dustin go into to insult each other is so dedicated it’s almost touching. Look at Dustmom. She’s constantly shown as being a health nut and vegan consistently worried about her weight and appearance (because women amirite?), yet today she foregoes all her principles and decides to tuck into a pizza with her husband just so she can set up the moment where she points out he’s a fat slob. That kind of thing takes commitment.
MW: If Sunny turns out to be the evil mimic from the Doctor Who episode “Midnight” I will, you know.
RMMD: What’s complicated? He lifted her personal trauma wholesale without bothering to tell her let alone ask if she was comfortable with it and now intends to publish it for the whole world* to read and get filthy rich** on it. What more do you need, a choreographed production number entitled “Dump His Sorry Ass”?
*Half a dozen Rex Morgan regulars
** Able to afford to eat at Jordan’s twice a month
Lockhorns: I feel bad that Loretta has no teeth, but these things happen.