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Mary Worth, 1/19/25

“Josh,” you’re probably wondering, “how can this storyline about Dawn’s relationship with her new emotionally volatile bully of a boyfriend get any more off-putting?” Well, what if we dragged in her emotionally manipulative creep of an ex, Jared, for good measure? Really loving his thought balloon here: in the Girl Race he and Dirk have cooked up, he’s cheering for his champion the Right Way, while Dirk’s technique is gauche and over the top. Does this presage worse things to come? He’ll hold his counsel, for now.

Dick Tracy, 1/19/25

Sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date on how things have been going in Dick Tracy over the past few months, but it turns out that the storyline that appeared to be about some construction industry corruption has ended in … Nazis! Nazis, and the Nazi-curious grandchildren of Nazis, the latter of which are assuming important roles in American business and industry. Dick thought he had defeated the Nazi menace by selling war bonds, but clearly that wasn’t enough.

Hagar the Horrible, 1/19/25

Personally, if I were one of a host of resentful vassals of a rich and powerful duke, I would simply rise up with my fellows and plunder his castle myself. Accepting token bribes from some outside raiders to look the other way so that they could go and seize the duke’s wealth seems like an overly complicated transaction that quite frankly doesn’t adequately reward me and my comrades for our crucial role in how things play out.

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Gasoline Alley, 11/22/24

Oh, sorry kids, looks like you’re going to slowly suffocate to death as your spaceship goes dark and circles Mars in an erratic orbit that will take centuries to decay. You know, you could’ve avoided all this if you had taken Ida Knoe the evil talking doll up on her offer to show you the solar system. Your voyage with her would’ve been made possible by demonic power from the depths of Hell itself, which unlike “electricity” or whatever isn’t subject to various physical laws and limitations that could leave you in a situation like this. Hindsight, though, am I right?

Pluggers, 11/22/24

As a coastal elitist, I guess I’m not really conversant on plugger standards of masculinity, but before today I would’ve assumed that “you’re so feeble you need household tools to open a simple carton of milk” would be the sort of thing they’d use to make fun of me, not something they’d proudly declare, in the newspaper in front of God and everyone, to be something that defined their pluggerdom.

Dick Tracy, 11/22/24

“Kid, you don’t get it. Tracy’s already gotten rid of the regular crime! Now he’s going after building code violations! And he’s going after them with his gun!”

Mary Worth, 11/22/24

Happy Friday, everyone! Hope you were looking for a panel of Mary and Jeff passionately closed-mouthed kissing to start your weekend off right! Wait, what’s that? You weren’t? You actually find it extremely off-putting? Well, tough shit. I have to look at this stuff and now so do you.

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Alice, 11/4/24

A thing I think about a lot is that the guy who the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory inspired to shoot up Comet Ping-Pong in the aftermath of the 2016 election had gotten home internet only a few weeks before. Imagine going from zero to 2016-election-campaign-level internet madness instantly! You’ve heard vaguely that the “Web” is the best way to learn about news and current events, finally get hooked up, and the first thing you discover is that there’s a cabal of pedophiles operating out of a pizza place in D.C. Anyway, it’s eight years later and the internet has gotten a lot worse, so, I’m just going to say it: I’m worried about Alice.

Dick Tracy, 11/4/24

I have a stepbrother who used to be a Marine and is recently retired from the Border Patrol, and that’s a great way to hear all the jokes that different kinds of troops and/or cops tell about each other (he once referred to the Highway Patrol as “AAA with a badge,” for instance). This Dick Tracy storyline started with a crazy (?) guy getting arrested by the Neo-Chicago Transit Authority (T.A.) for jumping a turnstyle, showing a fake (?) employee ID from the mysterious “Totten Organization,” and then he got murdered in the bathroom of the T.A. jail, so I’m hoping to see some similar inter-agency snark upcoming. I feel like we’re off to a good start here with the Chief telling Dick, “Oh yeah, some guy got arrested for an extremely minor crime and then died in jail, right under the T.A. cops’ noses … but wait, this time there’s something screwy about that scenario.”

Mary Worth, 11/4/24

Sometimes with visual art, it’s an open question whether you’re supposed to interpret what you’re seeing literally, or just understand that the people and items you can see have been arranged as you see them in order to emphasize their importance and relevance. Like, did Dr. Ed and Estelle really set up an end table for their three pets to sit on and bark/meow approvingly while they toast one another in front of their five friends and Wilbur? Or are they “really” on the floor, but we’ve only got two panels and surely you don’t want us to ditch the establishing shot or draw anybody’s feet?