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Archive: Dick Tracy

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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!

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Soapy Thursday

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Judge Parker, 10/23/25

I don’t know if I’ve actually spelled out the current Judge Parker situation, but it goes like this: April vanished after her Norwegian spy encounter and Randy vanished after going off in search of her, leaving their daughter Charlotte in the care of her increasingly drunk and depressed grandparents and, once they got too drunk and depressed, Neddy. Charlotte has been rather shy and withdrawn under her semi-competent care, until she got wind that Neddy and Sophie had a pet squirrel at one point in their youth (possibly in their foundling days before Sam and Abbey took them in, this is deep lore from before my time) and went absolutely berserk. You never know what’s going to trigger a child who’s experienced significant emotional trauma, but that face in panel two is one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen in the comics. I assume that Neddy is holding onto her temple because Charlotte’s shrieks are growing so intense that she’s afraid her skull is going to shatter like an eggshell.

Mary Worth, 10/23/25

Speaking of terrifying children and their mental powers, I am dying at Jeff’s dialogue here. You have to imagine that “Did that really happen, Mary?” was put in a painfully neutral tone, and then, when he had to come back with “I agree with you. I’ve been around enough to have seen things in life that cannot easily be explained!” he took it to the next level of neutrality, because he knows he needs to be very careful if he wants to get back to shore alive.

Dick Tracy, 10/23/25

Hey, remember Silver Nitrate, who last we saw a year and change ago was having a hard time in prison? Well, he’s still having a hard time, and now he’s got to decide if he trusts the prison infirmary to dispense psychopharmaceuticals that will actually soothe his mind instead of potentially making things worse. It’s a real downer! I think this strip should go back to violent gangsters with weird shaped heads shooting tommy guns at people, personally!

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There’s big profits to be had in zappin’

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Dick Tracy, 10/17/25

So Dick Tracy wrapped up the case of the lady scientist with the glowing green zap gun by merely arresting her, not shooting her in the back while she was “resisting arrest.” And this turned out to be a terrible idea, because mysterious, powerful forces, possibly related to Diet Smith’s company’s desire to own the intellectual property behind said zap gun, have gotten the charges against her dropped! Mostly I’m showing you today’s strip because I think the thumb placement in panel three is very funny. How much hush money exactly is Edgar being illegally given via an easily traceable paper check? Three million and how many dollars? I guess that’s a mystery we’re not meant to know the answer to.

Wizard of Id, 10/17/25

A thing that always bugged me as a young comics-obsessed child was that the Perfesser, not Shoe, clearly seemed like the main character in Shoe, just based on how often the two of them were in the strip, and that Les Moore, not Funky Winkerbean, was clearly the main character in Funky Winkerbean, and that the King, not the Wizard, was clearly the main character in Wizard of Id. Now that I’m older and wiser, I realize how the interest of comics creators in their own various characters can wax and wane over the years, but unless you’re Snuffy Smith, it’s unlikely you’ll completely overturn the order of your reality and get your name added to the strip’s title. Still, since I’ve started reading the Wizard of Id more often lately, I feel like the Wiz is in it much more than he once was, and today it appears that he’s trying to violently ensure that his return to glory is permanent.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/17/25

“A teacher and an author? How many non-lucrative jobs can one guy have? Is he in an improv group too?”