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Mark Trail, 10/26/18

[dramatic music sting] SHOCKING TWIST! But how can this be? Extremely Cool Motorcycle Guy has LONG HAIR and a MUSTACHE and STUBBLE??? How could such a ruffian be an ally of Mark Trail? I certainly hope that once we learn that the faction of Jose and Cool Motorcycle Guy was really being run by Mark from behind the scenes all along, and that Mark was happily using Rusty and Mara as bait to catch the artifact-nappers, our friend pulls off his wig and wipes off the fake facial hair to reveal the clean-shaven, crew-cut hero beneath the surface.

Dick Tracy, 10/26/18

How can we tell that Dick Tracy takes place in a heightened, parallel world, similar in some ways to our own but fundamentally different from it? Well, one clue is that Dick Tracy and the Neo-Chicago Major Crimes Unit routinely kill suspects without due process and face no consequences for doing so some syndicated newspaper cartoonist launching a strip about a forgotten pair of movie heroes from fifty years ago is “dominating the entertainment news today.”

Dennis the Menace, 10/26/18

The weirdest part of this panel is the word “countryside?” Like, that’s not a huge plane, but it looks to be a twin-engine commuter jet, probably carrying at least 75 people, and while those planes often fly to airports that serve smaller cities, you’re not going to land it on some dirt airstrip in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, I guess the real menace here is that Dennis has slowly wormed his way into Mr. Wilson’s trust, until he gets the point of opening up with his innermost hopes and dreams, at which point his wife can belittle and humiliate him.

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Dick Tracy, 10/23/18

The new-look Dick Tracy creative team loves to go to the strip’s 87-year-deep well for old favorite characters, but also introduce new ones, and since I’m still a defiant Dick Tracy Philistine after more than a decade of making fun of the strip, I have to check in with the invaluable Dick Tracy wiki to tell which I’m dealing with. That’s how I learned that Vitamin Flintheart has been in the strip since the ’40s, and that “In 1998, Vitamin was living in New York City, appearing in a production of Hamlet. He discovered his friend Dick Tracy, who was suffering from memory loss after eating tainted food on an airline,” a storyline that I’m devastated to have missed. Kandikane, meanwhile, is a recent addition, having been introduced in the last Vitamin storyline as a documentary filmmaker/candy cane obsessive who wanted to make a movie about the old fellow. Anyway, looks like he knocked her up! Just in case you wanted to think about May-December sex stuff involving Dick Tracy characters! Now you have to think about it! I have to think about it, so you have to think about it!

Six Chix, 10/23/18

I’m honestly going to be spending days mulling over the typography of the “At The Negative Commenters Association Meeting” sign. Why is “negative commenters” in a different font? Why are all the words all-capped except for “the”? Why is “at” in weird little extra box at the top of the sign? If this really were the Negative Commenters Association Meeting and that were really a sign letting you know where you were, wouldn’t that “at” be kind of weird and not-quite-right? Anyway, this is yet another Six Chix in honor of Unity Day 2018 (or, sorry #UnityDay2018), so good luck trying to figure out how this cartoon relates to bullying, at all! Oh, sorry does that make me a negative commenter? I don’t care! This cartoon is a baffling affront to the spirit of Unity Day 2018! (Please share this blog post on social media using the hashtag #BafflingAffrontToUnityDay2018)

Crankshaft, 10/23/18

Well, it looks like Crankshaft lost control of his bus on a rain-slicked hillside, killing him and all his passengers. Was his fiery death worth the suffering of all the innocent children who perished with him? Yes, yes it was.

Mary Worth, 10/23/18

At least someone around here understands the concept of consent.

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Shoe, 10/18/18

As a rule I hate Shoe strips set in fern bars where Shoe or the Perfersser hit on some sexy bird-woman and then wordplay happens, but I’m willing to make an exception in this case. First of all, notice that the Perfesser has his laptop open on the bar, showing that he’s spending his evening engaging in a little light embezzlement while throwing back a few cold ones. Then there’s the look of sudden urgency on his face, as if his opening line wasn’t meant as flirting it all, but something much darker. “Can you think of a way I can get the Treetops Tribune to reimburse me for $750 I lost at the dog track? Please, they’re gonna take my thumbs!”

Dick Tracy, 10/18/18

Oh man, it seems “Pauly” is some dude who looks significantly older than Dick Tracy, and yet is somehow seeking revenge for the death of his father, “Crutch,” who Dick Tracy probably killed. You can only see his face in the flashback-orb but I assume they called him “Crutch” because he was on crutches, and Dick gunned him down back in the early days of the strip when it was OK for a comics protagonist to be an open eugenicist. Anyway, since “this” turns out to be “failing to kill Dick Tracy, keeping his granddaughter and her friend safe, and getting killed yourself,” it’s not exactly the greatest act of revenge ever and you might not want to proudly proclaim it as such as you expire in your family enemy’s arms.