As a movie nostalgist myself, I’m feeling anxious about this one
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Dennis the Menace, 10/5/26
Part of being a sophisticated textual critic such as myself is that you have to be able to distinguish between “something I dislike” and “something that is executed poorly.” So, for instance, you know that on principle I dislike the “Dennis insults his mother’s cooking” Dennis the Menace panels. But if you’re going to do it, having Dennis stare ahead, dead-eyed and drooling, and saying “This tastes like shit, mom, it tastes like food that’s just been lying around until it goes bad” is a pretty good execution.
Dick Tracy, 10/5/26
Big news, everyone! A new Dick Tracy storyline is starting today, and the very first strip is a guy falling down the stairs and dying! Or at least I assume? He actually looks pretty much the same in the air as he does on the ground, so maybe he’s fine and just shaped like that.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/5/26
For too long, the Baby Boomers and retro-hipster Gen Xers of Glenwood have only been able to express their toxic nostalgia through dedication to roots country music. But soon they’ll also be able to enjoy older films that have been largely forgotten by the mainstream cineaste community for presumably good reason, thanks to Mae Mae’s carefully invested movie earnings and/or Glenwood’s rock-bottom real estate prices!
Crankshaft, 10/5/26
“As a matter of fact, some prescription medications, especially generics, are manufactured in China. It’s somewhat more common, however, for the chemical raw materials to be produced in China while the drug formulation happens in India. Just another facet of our globalized era, where different countries with different prevailing labor costs and specific know-how end up specializing in different segments of the supply chain. I know that’s not a ‘punchline’ per se but I thought you might find it interesting!”
57 replies to “As a movie nostalgist myself, I’m feeling anxious about this one”
The nouns Mud says come into being! Theatre! Bam! Rex doing something! Uhhhhh….well, he has limits.
The important thing is, Chinamen had a horrible day making your pills for 30 cents a day. Christ, Crankshaft, can you find joy in NOTHING?
RMMD Wow – this holodeck really can manifest anything. Let’s go back to Blank Void mode and try it again. This time, uhhh… I want a candy factory! No, no, a doggy daycare filled with adorable puppies!
Luann I suppose a speech class _could_ have benefits for someone preparing to be a teacher, but somehow I don’t think Toastmasters For Credit is what colleges offer.
Well, the unfortunate fellow in DT appears to be leaking motor oil rather than the more traditional blood, so perhaps he’s a robot and really is just shaped like that.
“More Spam, Mother! This drool ain’t for nothin’!”
I appreciate this guy’s gestures and effort, but I’m still not casting him for my A Chorus Line.
DtM: “Your food sucks, Mom …and such small portions.”
RMMD: If Mason Jarre can do it so can I.
RMMD: The Rex Morgan/Crankshaft crossover nobody asked for.
DTM: There’s no more damning indictment of 1950s white American suburbia than the fact that pork chops, mashed potato and peas counts as a “new recipe”.
RMMD: Choosing to believe that this is a crossover with the Funkyverse and the failing movie theater that Mae Mae’s bought is the Valentine. The townsfolk will wish a strip club had moved in after the third day of the Roots Country Movie Festival.
Dick Tracy:
He’s not dying! — he’s just doing The Charleston!
RMMD:
“I bought it!”
“Okay, so what does that have to do with anything?”
DtM:
“More importantly, Mom, why is it you get a fork, and I only get a spoon?”
RMMD: You know how every crustacean eventually evolves into a crab? Every continuity strip eventually evolves into Funky WInkerbean.
DtM: I like how the text is shifted well to the left, as if there was a profanity-laced response from Alice that had to be censored at the last minute.
RMMD: I feel as if every new Rex Morgan storyline could start with the phrase ‘What does this have to do with anything?‘ and we’ll only get the answer about half the time.
Howie Noel seems to be the new Dick Tracy artist, after Charles Ettinger’s recent departure. Noel’s biography says he’s been a continuing artist for the strip, and that his passion projects include “Dick Tracy’s Rogues Gallery.” Great to see a longtime fan ascend to the major leagues.
And it looks like his passions include drawing spectacular deaths, which means he should fit in great.
RMMD: I can’t wait for this theatre to only play Radio Ranch and then Mud wonders why its a financial failure.
@The Rambling Otter: I didn’t realize a few others have already done the same joke, just not as blatantly as I.
Sorry guys!
And the gaming cop who is horny for Sam Catchem is seducing him through video games, where she negs him in chat? How did I miss that?
@Bob Tice: RMMD: What does anything have to do with anything?
“Drug city” is much less fun than you would expect
Sorry, Mr. Pharmacist, Crankshaft was still alive by the time you filled the prescription. Next time, take longer.
Dick Tracy:
The dye job and fancy suit can’t fool me, that’s Al Capp’s Li’l Abner! Well, I mean, it was. He’s dead now.
Dick Tracy has decided to cut the bullshit! Why spend weeks with a tedious storyline, cliched characters and predictable twists just to have a mangled corpse at the end? We will provide you the mangled corpse on day one!
“You claim this a new recipe, but this is just a mixture of proteins, carbs and condiments, most of which you have used in previous meals! When are we going to get something radically different, like tasting solar plasma or a pure concept?!?!”
C’shaft: “As a matter of fact, I have no control over the speed of the supply chain and you yelling at me for it makes you look like an even bigger asshole than usual, if possible.”
DT: Well, no wonder he fell down the stairs; with tiny feet like that it’s a miracle he could walk at all.
RMMD: It was nice of the out-of-business movie theater to keep up those old 70s-era posters for decades for maximum nostalgia/depression. And also that nobody bought it in the intervening years to turn it into a porno house or a church.
DTM: “Also, why is my water glass floating above yours, and what the hell happened to Dad’s left eye?”
First “Crankshaft”, then “Rex Morgan MD”: cartoonists have this fantasy that if they had unlimited money they would use it to run a movie theatre projecting old movies. This is a great argument for making the industry die!
DTM: Be grateful, Dennis. You’re eating off of an inverted UFO, and how many of your friends can say the same?
MW: In dreams, we are far more perceptive than in our waking lives. Dream Toby knew that the gossip started with Nelly and Alma because Nelly, offscreen, has gained a reputation over the years for spreading malicious rumors. Toby’s subconscious is deeply observant. That’s definitely why we’re getting this strip, and it’s totally not because Brigman went on vacation and they’re recycling panels.
While I’m catching up on Dick Tracy… in last week’s “intermezzo” in the cemetery (where Shelly Pleger filled in for a week before the new artist came in), Blowtop says he’s all alone… but what about Croptop? She just got ordinary arrested, right? Doesn’t he visit her in prison?
Honestly, Drug City had better source its shit from Colombia, or I’m calling out the FTC for a truth-in-advertising claim.
Dustin: I would think math is one thing this nerdy kid is good at, but then I remembered this is Dustin where everybody young is terrible and nobody is allowed to enjoy anything.
JP: See? Even April is getting tired of this crap.
MT: “And only you would ask about it as if it were some erotic experience rather than a permanently traumatizing ordeal.”
MW: DREAM SEQUENCE LET’S GOOOOOOOOO
Phantom: “Either way I sit here and do nothing.”
Dick Tracy: That’s not just “a guy.” It appears to be beloved(?) Dick Tracy villain Blow Top, hoo gosh, doing a tribute to David Bowie’s much under-rated album The Lodger(?).
@Ettorre:
I think there is an honest space for movie theater nostalgia, based mostly around the fact that most of the small town movie theaters went out of business 20+ years ago, and folks like me in rural areas would have to drive more than an hour to see a movie in a theater.
Of course, some of us still remember how unpleasant it is trying to watch a movie in a theater..
RMMD: We all know that Mud’s next line is going to be, “For what?” And sadly, Mae Mae is too smitten to respond with the sarcasm that it deserves.
GT: “C’mon! If I can talk without ever opening my grotesquely inflated lips, you can win a football game!”
MW: If Toby dreams that she’s having a litter of Nelly-faced babies, I’m done. I mean it.
DT: Aaah, the days where people casually lived in spooky old mansions.
Crank: Given that the scene obviously takes place in a pharmacy, the second panel that takes us outside to tell us Ed is shopping at “Drug City”, I believe this is an allegory (satire?) for the fentanyl crisis.
Rex Morgan, M.D.:
I spent a few unsuccessful minutes trying to determine the source of the poster used in the second panel—it’s pretty obviously a real movie poster that been edited into the drawing. Unfortunately I was stymied by the low resolution and my poor knowledge of cinema, but maybe someone else will recognize it. Either way, the fact that this theater put up multiple posters of the same movie instead of using its advertising space more efficiently probably contributed to it going out of business, although being located in a blank existential void that apparently constitutes Glenwood’s “Old Town” might’ve been a bigger factor.
@Schroduck:
I mean, the Roots Country Movie Festival could just be O, Brother and Deliverance on repeat, and everyone would have a great time.
DT: Who left the roses in the graveyard? Was it the security guy? There are no other characters in that arc! Or was it secretly DT.
GT: The “2nd” is for the second quarter. It is NOT the second half. There is plenty of game left. I mention this because it seems the writer and artist think American HS football is played in halves. Was that a goal line jump or pop pass? Pulling a play out of Amos Alonzo Staggs’s playbook?
JP: Now everyone starts wondering where is April. Not when she didn’t show up to pick up Charlotte. The NotCIA wants CIApril to “do one last job” for them.
MW: Where is Ian? Why didn’t Toby just talk with him that evening after dinner and before bed? Is he away on a “business trip”? At least that could advance both stories (the misunderstanding and the gossip spreading, Mary coincidentally is also away).
RMMD: So this is a front for money laundering right? The strip just needs to evolve. I get it that the creators are sick and tired of the sick and tired and have a late love of alt-roots country and reubenesque beauties.
New Nancy; This arc is pretty good – and I hope Caroline Cash nails the payoff. Why is Nancy so anti-hat on Sluggo? What is the real reason?
Phantom: Will the Phantom attach a tracker to the Python – a matching on his other ankle?
Dick Tracy: I always respect commitment to a bit, no matter what it is, so kudos to this guy for not letting being completely alone prevent him from recreating the murder of private detective Milton Arbogast from Psycho.
RxMD: So the strip has finally evolved into Funky Cranky.
GA: Last week, Joel and Rufus found an old Abe Lincoln letter, lost it, and let it go as if it didn’t happen. And it still moved the plot faster than the current plot in Mary Worth
FLASH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! Either Flash will get zapped or the Doc’s arsenal has an anti-zapped feature. And since we got here, time to charge the EV with Our Hero.
JP: If it wasn’t for Narrator Box, I would have said it was a random reader reacting.
@matt w: So we have a new Dick Tracy artist, but the same “guest writer” as the last storyline, and in fact the same one we’ve had since February, coming off a storyline where Howie Noel was the guest artist and there was a different guest writer. The last time there hasn’t been a “guest” anything box in a Dick Tracy strip Josh’s covered was last year. Does Mike Curtis actually have anything to do with this strip anymore? Should they just acknowledge Eric Costello as the full-time writer, or is there something else going on that’s not obvious?
DT: Looks like Guest Writer
ElvisEric Costello is still in the driver’s seat, sigh. Somebody ought to drop in on Mike Curtis and check for a pulse.Crankshaft could take this newfound knowledge in a variety of different directions, including but not limited to becoming the guy who gets super into traditional Chinese medicine later in life or starting an “all-American” druggery to get back to the good ol’ days when we weren’t reliant on no international supply chains by gum
@Morgan Wick: It’s the same situation as my Dentist.
The Dental Hygienist does literally all the work, then the Dentist comes in, looks at my teeth for two seconds “Yep, those are teeth” then leaves.
Even when my Mom had to have a bad tooth extracted, our dentist didn’t do it, but instead had her go to another clinic across town.
Dick Tracy: “All right, forensics says he was floating three feet above the stairs at an oblique angle, stiff as a board! How’d he get that way? Is he clip art? We’ve got a lot of questions and no answers!”
‘Shaft: “Yes, China. Chinatown to be exact. Those Tong wars really slow down deliveries.”
RMMD: Hmmm… maybe that is The Valentine.
To quote the Superintendent Chalmers from The Simpsons about Springfield Elementary:
“This school was deemed the worst school in all of Missouri… which is why it was shipped to our state, brick-by-brick.”
Crankshaft: There was a running gag years ago, where Crankshaft would take his medication while in the kitchen, but he would keep dropping the pills and they would roll under the fridge.
I’m still waiting for a payoff, where one day they move the fridge and find a massive cache of pills under it.
But even then, probably no-one would get the joke because that gag was so long ago, so it would be just a random unfunny mishmash. So in other words, just another Crankshaft comic.
I prefer to think that Dennis’s true burn is that the new “recipe” is just a piece of ham, with a side of peas and mashed (?) potatoes.
“What do you think killed him, Tracy?”
“Jazz hands. Round up the local community theaters.”
RMMD: Mae Mae asks Mud; “what do you think of Birth of a Nation for the grand reopening?”
MW: Toby looks like she’s drawing her final breath in Panel 1. Her last Earthly thoughts better be of Mary or she won’t get into Heaven!
RMMD: At first I thought the poster was for ‘The Great Escape’ but there appear to be four words in the title. It definitely looks like one of those ‘all-star’ epic productions from the mid-to-late 60s.
I’ll admit, I think it’s very sad that so many small theaters have either been demolished or are slowly rotting into oblivion (I’ve come across several). They’re just another ‘third space’ that has been lost that helped us realize as communities that we’re not so different as certain Mollusks want us to we think we are. I think we’ve talked previously here about my wish that older movies could be rediscovered as just as entertaining as whatever is getting cranked out today.
Ph: That dog is definitely thinking ‘I just want my Snausages….’
JP: It’s Pavel Jr., right? There’s no one else it could be. If it were the CIA, we’d be getting a shot of the Cavelton CIA Complex (‘Home of the famous Chief Pissy McBitchface!’) instead of this nondescript building. We never saw Pavel Jr. get his, and he’s pissed now that CIApril blew up his prison and killed all of his men. On the bright side, maybe we’ll get to see what Bogdan’s been up to!
RMMD- so, if Mae Mae is going to run the theater, does this mean she leaves the restaurant? That closes down again, so there’s no need to go to town, and no need to see a movie- Brilliant.
“I bought it. We’re gonna show nothing but the raunchiest, raciest, triple-X material 24-7. We’re gonna be a Mecca for smut!”
“But why?”
“Because they won’t be able to draw it and maybe, just maybe, they’ll cut us out of the strip and we can go to the blesséd empty space reserved for those forgotten by the writers. We can see Barney Google and Lyman.”
“Yeah, but Rex Morgan might be there too.”