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Dick Tracy, 3/25/20

Wow, I’m not sure if Quiver’s little scheme here, which I assume entails having down-and-out folks collect spare change for a nonexistent charity, deserves the noble appellation of con. I expect a con to consist of complex wheels-within-wheels trickery as depicted in the movie The Sting, not a sad little attempt to make rent with a pile of quarters and nickels. Still, it’s nice to see that Shaky wants to get involved — clearly he’s one of those guys who always needs to be productive and can’t sit still and relax a little, despite the fact that he is (and I can’t emphasize this enough) dying.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/25/20

Man, I remember when weddings between members of two rival Hootin’ Holler clans resulted in violence, not passive aggression. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Snuffy Smith is losing its edge.

Curtis, 3/25/20

Not sure what denomination church the Wilkins family attends, but making up fake scripture for personal financial gain is pretty much always considered heresy, right? Never would’ve pegged Curtis for a heretic. You hate to see it.

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Dick Tracy, 3/23/20

Hmm, it seems that Shaky, who’s slowly dying, is just going to bounce from one comical house to another until he finally dies! Today’s he’s visiting his cousin Quiver Trembly, which makes me ask: has there ever been any kind of genetic testing done to determine the origin of what’s clearly a heritable condition of some sort? Anyway, you can tell that Quiver is also into crime because she thinks the answer to everything is cocaine.

Mark Trail, 3/23/20

Big excitement, everyone! The Great Adoption Tryout is underway! It’s better than any reality show! (Side note: if Harvey Camel were still alive and here, he would definitely be live-streaming this.) The mean blond kid is already sitting next to the orphan-hungry Crowleys, and I’m honestly not sure if he’s supposed to be also vying for an adoption or what, but what I do know is that he’s going to sabotage Kevin’s happiness by any means necessary, and I for one am very excited to see what he has up his sleeve.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/23/20

Look, folks, I have to deliver some tough truths: it is not OK to shoot people in the head with a nail gun! I don’t care how many hyperniche musical genres they rattle off at you. Just tell them, in a kind but firm tone, that you could not possibly give less of a shit about what “roots country” is or what distinguishes “rockabilly” from “garage rock.” Violence is never the answer, even under extreme duress!

Dennis the Menace, 3/23/20

Some might say that just being stupid isn’t very menacing. But I would suggest that it’s possible to be so profoundly dumb that you truly are dangerous to yourself and everyone around you, and Dennis is getting pretty close to that line!

Crankshaft, 3/23/20

Say, remember last week’s absolute thrill ride, “Lillian is on a podcast“? Well strap yourself the fuck in for this week’s heart-pounder, “Lillian is on the radio!”

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Six Chix, 3/19/20

I think the joke here is that the mummy is very bad at cooking because he … doesn’t have … eyes? Like, can mummies not see, in the classic horror-movie mummy canon? As near as I can tell, mummies’ traditional powers involve shuffling forward very slowly and moaning, so the fact that they can’t see anything makes them even less scary. Anyway, if I were doing this comic, I’d make the joke about how the mummy is covered with highly flammable linen cloth, preserved over the centuries by the bone-dry Egyptian desert, which would have hilarious results next to a stove’s heating elements, but I guess that’s why I’ve always been deemed “too edgy” for the newspaper funny pages.

Dick Tracy, 3/19/20

DICK TRACY UPDATE: Shaky (remember him?) had his big meetup with the Tracys and ended up getting shot in the shoulder, and now he’s laying low at some criminal safehouse for which he had the keys, except it also happens to be where crime-family-adjacent characters Ugly Crystal and her bio-dad (remember them?) are living. Anyway, this has all been funny because Shaky has been trying to “play it cool” despite slowly bleeding out from his bullet wound, and while it isn’t quite as theatrically awful a death as you would’ve seen in the Dick Locher years of this strip, watching his agony mount has been pretty impressively grim, I’ll say that.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/19/20

Wait, do all the characters in Mother Goose and Grimm live in the Land of Oz? It would explain all the talking animals, I’ll say that much.