MidMarch follies
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Dick Tracy, 3/17/26
Welp, the huge prison riot/jailbreak in Dick Tracy is winding down, with a lot of bad guys on the loose but the authorities regaining control of the facility. Now, there are lots of narrative reasons why we might start with some guards capturing prisoners in an open field, including one guy kneeling with a gun pointed at the back of his head, and then smash cut to a bunch of bodies under sheets in a similar looking field. But as your Comics Curmudgeon who remembers the old days of cartoonish Dick Tracy ultraviolence, I’m kind of required to guess at the grimmest possible narrative reason.
Hi and Lois, 3/17/26
Man, there are a lot of holidays I’m glad we’re not going to see Thirsty celebrating, I’m just gonna leave it at that!
Mary Worth, 3/17/26
“Yes, we certainly do, Toby! Say, how are your parrots doing? You know, the ones that shit everywhere and almost drove you to divorce?”
88 replies to “MidMarch follies”
Grandstanding oddballs, Toby. Say it. Say it!
“And now, back to my career of fashioning elementary school animal sculptures! Good stuff, eh, meddling lady in a sexless relationship who’s obsessed with muffins and fish squares and has a color-changing cat?”
Mary Worth:
“And here’s another series of questions for you, Mary: where’s there something around here that’s the color olive? Where’s there something that’s the color chartreuse? Where’s there something that’s the color emerald? And where’s there something that’s the color lime?”
“Why are you asking those kinds of questions, Toby?”
“It’s the traditional ‘where‘ing of the green that comes with today’s festivities!”
H&L: IDK, Thirsty with dreadlocks might be kinda cute.
Power move of Thirsty to wait until they both got to the office to tell Hi this.
JP: I prefer not to wish the Parkers well but as I lie here in the pre-dawn darkness pondering life I realize that Randy and April now that are finally together again and safe have had mind bending, eye rolling, toe curling, screaming apocalyptic sex.
MW “My parrots are doing about as well as your psychic connections to an unrelated kid you’ve flown in cross-country for a visit”
LOL, Josh, I read that as “How are your PARENTS doing? You know, the ones who shit everywhere and nearly drove you to divorce?” And I thought, whoa, Toby sure has an INTERESTING background…
Hi and Lois:
Hi and Dagwood Bumstead appear to be the only two residents of Comicsdom whose places of employment haven’t gone workplace casual.
Has Thirsty not done this every year since he got a decent fake I.D.? Does Hi assume nothing at this point? I would’ve loved to see Thirsty show up to work, impeccably groomed, no hair-of-the-dog.
“But it’s St. Patrick’s, Thirsty!”
“Nah, man. Low-hanging fruit.”
Rex Morgan “Fill In The Box”: Why is Katherine recoiling? Fill in the box pointing to the phone in yesterday’s Rex Morgan.
Zits: I love the puppy’s side eye in the final panel. *chef’s kiss*
DT:
“Are you going to surrender, you miscreant?”
“Over my dead body!”
Hi and Lois:
His bold proclamation to the contrary notwithstanding, here’s betting that Thirsty doesn’t festoon himself all in red and celebrate St. Joseph the Worker’s Day two days hence, on March 19.
MW: The Birdwoman of Charterstone weighs in.
H&L: Thirsty was the life of the party during Kwaanza and Diwali, too.
MW: The Birdwoman of Charterstone weighs in.
H&L: Thirsty was the life of the party during Kwaanza and Diwali, too.
Sorry about that.
I rarely laugh out loud at Mary Worth, but …
DT: The aftermath of a deadly prison riot is the absolute WORST time to jump out from behind a bush and shout “Boogedy Boogedy!”. Read the room, Shadow Man.
H&L: Thirsty being Thirsty, no one batted an eye when he showed up in his bathrobe on March 15th.
H&L: Wait, was there anybody who thought Thirsty wasn’t Irish?
@Bob Tice:
He’s definitely not celebrating Eid al fitr, either.
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Crankshaft : Are people like Bat
iukTON THOMAS the reason all those 90s cartoon had a “Don’t fall for advertising, that specific brand of shoes/soft drink/etc. is NOT the reason your idol is so good at what he does” episode?***********
Dick Tracy : let’s note that the warden is asking for a head count rather than a body count; they’re counting the number of prisoners who were recaptured alive instead of the ones who are now under sheets, so that way they have an excuse to incorrectly presume Double-Up, Mumbles and B.B. Eyes were killed, so Dick Tracy (if not the reader) can be slightly surprised when they show up alive again!
***********
Frazz : So, Caufield, the flawless perfect genius, just handed in a spelling test where he mispelled every word? Sure, sure, “he did it on purpose to annoy Mrs Olsen”…
**********
Luann : You know what? If this is going the direction of the characters in this strip FINALLY realising that “Tara Starr is a pathological liar who makes up all her daredevil antics because she knows straight-laced normies like Luann and Bernice won’t question it” is a very real possibility, I’m for it!
DT: “So bring in all those prisoners’ heads so we can count them.”
DT “Head count? Complete heads or pieces as well?! Ha, I kid, but seriously, I think we just committed a war crime out there.”
H&L Thirsty the true spirit of the American melting pot, by assimilating every possible excuse to get hammered.
MW And that concludes another exciting Mary Worth storyline. Please join us a the Bum Boat for four to six weeks of meandering epilogue
Hi and Lois: Thirsty damn well better be showing up in orange on 12 July. The Scots-Irish comics reading community demands equal representation!
Dick Tracy: “Do you also want a body count? Because the numbers…are, uh, not the same…”
SlyFox: I don’t get why the spider is so mad about the fly when he’s snagged himself a whole corndog!
SlyFox2: Can’t quite tell if the fly is so happy to escape the spider that he doesn’t notice that he’s about to be swallowed whole by the frog, or if he’s happy that the frog will deliver to him a swift death, rather than having his bodily juices slowly drained by the spider while he remains fully conscious.
Pluggers invented phone sex.
CS: Batton Thomas and Skip Rawlings are a long-married gay couple, both of whom have advanced senility. Prove me wrong.
Luann: Well, that’s what you get for trying to flex in front of Gunther.
MW:
Now, do Mary Muffins reproduce like tribbles when you place them in close proximity to one another? I ask in part because, as is the case today, even though someone has reached out to take one of the muffins, the muffin tray always appears to be full notwithstanding that.
Mary Worth: In the background, the bowl of muffins rested unnoticed. Everyone believed — everyone was led to believe — they were Mary’s creation, born of mixing and baking. The truth was darker, richer, with a taste of blueberry and a hint of cinnamon: they were self-replicating, something like basidiomycetes, fed occasionally with a mixture of yeast and the body parts of missing Charterstone residents, ever sprouting, ever shooting forth the spores that created the “eccentricities” of their victims. Only Mary, and the parrots, knew better.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV:
You know, we both expressed the very same idea within a minute of one another just now. But you clearly have a much higher IQ than I do. :-)
Dick Tracy: The worst villain a newspaper cartoonist can imagine: a panel that forces the reader to judge your ability to draw hands.
Mary Worth: I didn’t expect Toby, of all people, to succinctly explain the conceit behind Mary Worth, but “we share our apartment complex with some eccentric folks” is probably the closest thing to a mission statement we’ll ever get for the strip.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: And German-American Day on October 6! I mean, Thirsty probably drank beer that day anyway, but equal time, right?
Hi and Lois-If there is alcohol involved Thirsty will be there.
FC-Bread and meat both well past their expiration dates.
“You can’t have prisoners escaping if you don’t have prisoners,” Dick Tracy said, tapping his head with a knowing look as he watched somehow a second criminal being eaten alive by rats, which is something one normally doesn’t even see a first time.
***
I don’t know why they removed the third panel where he continues, “…and it’s socially acceptable to get plastered.” R.I.P. Thirsty’s liver.
***
“Anyway, when is your chin beard husband getting home, Toby?”
MW: Toby no longer walks places as we know it. Her feet rest on two parrots who carry her through the halls of Charterstone. She is, however, only a minor god. Mary, the all powerful, wills herself from place to place and assumes various animal forms to make love with humans. Yesterday, Dr Jeff had the irresistible urge to fuck a chicken.
MW: “We share our apartment complex with some eccentric folks, don’t we? Lord knows WE’RE not the eccentric ones.”
H&L: A true alcoholic would take March 17 off to let the amateur drinkers have a go at it. And/or have the good sense to stay home on a night when the DUI patrol will be out in force. (SEE ALSO: December 31.)
“Oh, that explains Black History Month, Thirsty. I thought . . . .”
“Yeah, so did H.R. Anyway, unemployment’s great.
MW: Let she who did not fall for an obvious phishing email cast the first stone.
MW-Shouldn’t girlfriend be in quotation marks?
MW-It would be a nice twist if we find out that Jeff is the head of this scam ring.
H&L: The administration’s anti-diversity initiatives have really cut into Thirsty’s drinking opportunities.
“Warden. I don’t know how to tell you, but . . . the prisoners, they emptied the laundry room. Just left huge piles of clean sheets out in the grass.”
“Fucking animals. Solitary for the lot of them. I tell you, Captain, we really are the thin line between civilization and barbarism.”
@A Grave Mind: Kind of like how vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer always stayed home during Halloween, because they considered it too common and commercial. (This didn’t stop Halloween-episode havoc from happening, but still.)
Family Circus: Do you want a lettuce on moldy bread sandwich, Billy? Because that’s how you get a lettuce on moldy bread sandwich.
H&L: I’m just glad that they’re doing this joke today and not, say, Cinco de Mayo, which would require Thirsty to dress in a sombrero and serape.
MW: “Eccentric”? Yeah, I guess, although to me the word implies something more benign and charming, like Doc Brown or that old lady in The Aristocats. I’d probably use something more along the lines of “completely batshit” for Charterstone’s residents.
@Banana Jr. 6000: #37: See also October 31. The police say that Halloween is now the second largest binge drinking night, after New Years Eve.
DT: How much job security can you have when the nameplate at your desk just says WARDEN? I mean, unless the warden’s name is also Warden. Is he Warden Warden?
H&L: Poor Hi is extremely unsure about this bit. As soon as Thirsty mentions anything that even sounds like cultural appropriation, Hi is like, “Yeah, I’m gonna back off about 10 feet. I’m not part of this.”
MW: Man, Toby has not been skipping arm day! I mean, look at that well-toned forearm she’s using to lift that muffin to her thin pink mouth!
Mary Worth: “You’re right, our neighbors sure are eccentric, Toby! Now, have a muffin — I made 600 in this last batch.”
Hi and Lois: Thirsty is in for a surprise when he starts observing religious holidays like Yom Kippur, Mahashivaratri, Ramadan, and Eastern Orthodox Lent — but the fasting will be good for him.
Pluggers: You’re a plugger if you look back on obscene phone calls with fond nostalgia, because they were better than whatever the hell the kids are doing now.
MW: Toby’s remark reminds me of the old joke of the guy who goes into an asylum, looks around, and sees everyone dressed as Napoleon. “Doctor,” he whispers, “all these people think they’re me!”
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – I expected that by now Fergus would have used his beefy forearm to swipe across the counter, clear it of everything, lift Mae Mae onto it, and give her a jolly good rogering. But that’s what I get for expecting realism in the funny pages.
H&L: Okay, so … based on the way Hi and Thirsty are dressed, it already is St. Patrick’s Day in this scene. But isn’t this a conversation they would have had before St. Patrick’s Day? And where exactly is this scene taking place? Hi is wearing a suit and holding a briefcase, and he seems to be in a parking lot with an office building behind him. So did Thirsty follow Hi to work specifically to tell him he’s taking the day off? That’s just a dick move, I almost have to respect it.
Can’t wait to see how Marvin finds a way to combine taekwondo with diaper jokes.
C’shaft: You know how when you were a kid you used to think that your brand-new sneakers would help you run faster? BatTom apparently never grew out of that.
Dustin: “Hey Kyle, that lardass who always drives up to the pay window rather than ordering at the speaker is back. Give him the Annoying Customer Combo, extra bodily fluids.”
GT: I miss the narration boxes. Now I know even less of what’s happening in the sports sequences.
HotC: Steenz is running a better relationship scam story than Mary Worth right now.
JP: What are the odds that Bogdan is holding April and Randy hostage now? Even? Better?
Luann: Les lying his way into a rock climbing date he’s completely unprepared for would be a “hilarity ensues” setup in most strips. Here, it’s more of a lead-in to “hilarity will ensue, maybe, one day, if we don’t forget about it and move on to something else before then.”
RMMD: Mudgus looks so disappointed. He was all set to post his selfie with Maena on Instagram.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: ‘Uh, I don’t do fat chicks,’ Fergus mutters sheepishly.
THERE’S your realism.
JP: “We had to set up this video even though we lack the ringlight I would prefer for when I would make one of my tedious hours long YouTube video essays.”
FG: “What did you think of the Dragon Man revolt, seeing as you’re the ONLY SURVIVOR – ah, I ruined my own attempt at toying with you. Beautiful! Another red-letter day for Ming the Merciless! Just great!”
MW: I think Toby meant to say, “We share our ECCENTRIC apartments with some folks who have a lot of COMPLEXES, don’t we?”
@Joe Blevins:
“DT: How much job security can you have when the nameplate at your desk just says WARDEN? I mean, unless the warden’s name is also Warden. Is he Warden Warden?”
This is like fictional depictions of the U.S. President where we never see their face or hear their name even though they’re obviously just some generic placeholder, only much more needless.
Pluggers forget they can unscrew the mouthpiece and remove the mic, which is why so many of them have to tell new neighbors when they move in.
FC: Billy, if you want a green sandwich just look under the couch. You should know this; been putting them there.
DT: “You know”, says one of the gun toting guards in the second panel. ” We’ve got the perfect setup for a conceptual art piece, with all of these carefully arranged corpses. I’ve seen lamer acts get grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.”
FC: No, but you can have some of Mommy’s green beer.
H&L – When you buy your St. Patrick’s Day attire from Temu.
Gasoline Alley-Walt’s excited for death because he’s lived far longer than people should. He feels like butter spread too thin on bread.
Crankshaft-This is the interview that never ends.
DT: You think that’s grim? Try realizing that your single best shot at immortality is having once catalogued the grisly deaths of Dick Tracy villains.
@Liam: ‘Crankshaft-This is the interview that never ends.’
Yes it goes on and on my friend!
Someone starting blathering, not knowing what it was
And now they’ll just keep talking on forever just because…
Pluggers – Before reading the caption, I thought Catherine Reeger was waxing nostalgic about obscene phone calls. Yeah, those halcyon days before caller ID.
@The Quiet Man:
‘Uh, I don’t do fat chicks,’ Fergus mutters sheepishly.
THERE’S your realism.
Au contraire, L’Homme Silent – Fergus absolutely does do fat chicks. He laid claim to Wanda before being a jerk and losing her to Truck. And Wanda isn’t the poster child for svelte.
Well, that was back when he was still Mud. Then he joined the Cult of Rene Belluso and became Fergus, he has become a gentler, kinder man. But I still think he’d like to bury Mae-Mae…in Mud.
MW – 5 out of 5 residents of your apartment complex are eccentric. Look around you. No matter whether the person next to you is eccentric or not, you’re one of the eccentric ones.
Six Chix – “It’s because you only have one arm, isn’t it? How rude!”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Isn’t that Lola Perez?”
“Yeah. She skis better than you”
“True…”
“But look at how much help she has”
DT – “A head-count is too much work. Couldn’t I just count the legs and divide by two?”
@Guillermo el chiclero: Wow, more than St. Patrick’s Day? That’s shocking, and kind of scary since small children are expected to be walking about.
@Guillermo el chiclero: “You know”, says one of the gun toting guards in the second panel. ” We’ve got the perfect setup for a conceptual art piece, with all of these carefully arranged corpses. I’ve seen lamer acts get grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.”
And given the predilections of the current regime, I’d say it’s a shoo-in. . .
MW: “We sure have some eccentric neighbors, don’t we?” Toby said to the muffin.
“Yes we do. That gray haired woman over there is odd too.”
“You’re nice though. May I call you Bran? Or Branny?”
“Sure.”
“Would you like to come home with me? The pompous axe is at work.”
@Hibbleton: “desire to fuck a chicken”.
RIP New York City newsman Ernie Anestos, who passed away last weekend. (See the Letterman Late Show YouTube. It was one of Dave’s favorite live TV bloopers)
CS – Here’s a secret of the comic strip trade: don’t use the phrase “I felt as though I had been made privy to a secret of the trade.”
CS: Batton can’t even find anything interesting in the things he chooses to talk about. Yesterday’s strip was “I bought my drawing board for $25, and I saw it on Not eBay for $5,000.” The obvious resolution is either the sentimental “I would never sell it because it’s more valuable to me than that,” or the unsentimental “I cashed it in because $5,000 is a lot of money for a desk that’s easily replaceable.” Which did Batton choose? Neither. He brings it up, then leaves it hanging in the air like a stale fart, while he smirks and moves on to his next random topic.
Today he’s talking about Bristol boards. Why does that matter? Who knows? Who cares? Batton’s never going to tell us anyway! It’s like watching a group of people you don’t know perform an inside joke they refuse to let you in on, but which you can tell isn’t funny anyway.
@Weaselboy:
Judging by his contents, Batton Thomas has been privy for a long, long time.
Careful with that cup, Mary. The meddling has just begun. Don’t get sloppy now.
MW: “We share our apartment complex with some eccentric folks, don’t we?” Toby said, as she contemplated the arduous task of choking down one of Mary’s trademark beige muffins.
RMMD: “I’m the waitress here, mister. Spilling the beans is MY job,” Mae Mae says, tipping a smoking hot bowl of beans into Mud’s crotch.
MW: Toby’s got forearms like Popeye and the face of a fourteen-year-old girl. Brigman started celebrating St. Pat’s a little early.
BTW, Milton Caniff was a mensch, and a good friend of fellow cartoonist Mell Lazarus: They even worked together. Apparently Mell had a gigantic original of Steve Canyon above the couch in his living room. It is not known whether Milt owned a gigantic portrait of Sonya Hobbes, but signs point to “no.”
CS: I learned everything I know about Bristol Board from television, watching the Bristol Channel.
9CL: Uh, does this make sense to anyone? Anyone? I’m willing to believe I’m too beef-headed to understand Brooke’s sophisticated humor. Did Amos turn into Santa Claus in the last panel? Is that it? Anyone?
I was going to make some scathing comment about a grown man needing everyone to think happy thoughts about “Trixie” so that she, a human being with the ability to make rational decisions about her relationship (as far as e knows), won’t break up with him, but hey, the strip already did that for me! Oh yes, Karen Moy, that Karen Moy sure writes some eccentric characters, right?
MW – One day Mary will die, and her will will state that Olive will inherit Charterstone if she apologizes to everyone Mary has hurt. Because I really want to see Brigman illustrate My Grandmother Told Me to Tell You She’s Sorry.
@Uncle Lumpy: ALL the other comic strip folks loved Milt Caniff.
I’ve posted this link before; I think it’s one of the most delightful bits in the history of the art form — five panels and every one funny. Unfortunately it comes up small, and to read it you have to do that two-fingers-on-the-screen thing.
Al Capp mistaken for Milton Caniff
H&L – Thirsty’s already pre-drinking for next year’s Purim.
Hi And Lois: The idea of Thirsty trying to be some kind of ethnicity chameleon is actually kind of unironically hilarious in a dark way. Does he join Kwanzaa celebrations in December by shouting “WHAT’S UP MY N[censored]!” into somebody’s house and than presumably get beaten to a pulp? Does he spend Indigenous Peoples’ Day dressed up in stereotypical “native” costuming and rant to anyone he can about how the White Man took his land? There’s a lot of Arrested Development-esque comedy to be mined here.
Mary Worth: “Eccentric folks” might become the new “endearing quirks” if Moy isn’t careful.
Dick Tracy: I appreciate Ettinger and Curtis avoiding some of the Attica vibes by making the armed guard black and the prisoner white, but enough people seem to have gotten killed that they ran out of body bags and had to cover the corpses with white sheets in the interim, and that is also quite troubling.
@Ukulele Ike:
But did you learn how to stomp on it?