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Dick Tracy, 3/20/18

OK, fine, I take it back, Dick Tracy isn’t abruptly ending its Ghost Pepper plot at all. In fact, it’s drawing it out in loopy new directions! Ghost Pepper, who dislocated his shoulder in the crash, has sought out “Phishface,” who is a doctor (?) or something, and also a fish-man in classic inexplicable Dick Tracy style. He’s such a fish-man that he apparently used to have a “base” at the aquarium, which either means he really is part fish, and the character is a shameless attempt to cash in on the sexy fish fever sparked by The Shape Of Water, or he’s just really committed to the bit, I guess. The real question we need to ask: what’s the deal with Dick Tracy’s obsession with criminals lying low at facilities where animals are held captive for the public to gawk at, making particular use of the many closets and storage areas therein?

The Phantom, 3/20/18

You’d think being a high-powered UN official and consort to an immortal jungle god would leave little room for boredom in Diana’s life, but I guess if she needs to entertain herself by idly trying to work out which of her professional or family acquaintances are savage terrorist warlords, who am I to judge?

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Mary Worth, 3/15/18

Oh, well, this is nice, Wilbur and Dawn are saying a heartfelt goodbye before she leaves on a three-month trip, and … WAIT A MINUTE, COMPUTER: ENHANCE

I guess that’s a coloring mishap that’s rendered Wilbur’s flesh a weird green color, and that that’s his wrist and hand bending around Dawn’s shoulder, but it sure looks like a ghastly tentacle is writhing out of Wilbur’s sleeve and wrapping around his daughter as he finally reveals his true form. He shouldn’t be alive, but he is, because he’s one of the ageless Old Ones whose human fleshsuit is starting to slough off!

Dick Tracy, 3/15/18

Ah, it looks like Ghost Pepper isn’t dead after all, and Dick is a little too confident of his ability to kill his enemies indirectly. Fortunately, there are lots of ways a man (a ghost? a ghost-man?) can die fleeing from trigger-happy cops down a snowy mountainside!

Family Circus, 3/15/18

You know how the Keane Kompound walls are generally vast, featureless voids? Well, Mommy has finally decided to do something about it! Too bad she waited until after the endless undifferentiated emptiness drove her insane.

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Mark Trail, 3/14/18

Wow, these guys went through a lot of trouble to set up a camp in conjunction with the zoo to capture lost, terrified circus animals, and yet they seem pretty mad that one of said circus animals is, uh, lost, terrified, and acting pretty much like you’d expect? Whatever, we all know that this strip has an unaccountable bias against our elephant friends, who it’s described as vicious, murderous yam thieves, so I’m not surprised Mark and company are referring to this poor creature as a “beast” and apparently preparing to take it on in hand- and stick-to-tusk combat.

Dick Tracy, 3/14/18

Hey, so, there was a Dick Tracy plot a couple months ago that I didn’t even cover because it happened so fast where Dick was kidnapped and left to die out in the snow but then almost immediately rescued by … I want to say Gravel Gertie, I think? Anyway, it didn’t really have much of an arc to it, if you follow me, and the same can be said for this plot, which practically sprinted from “Dude incurs Ghost Pepper’s wrath by trying to buy his restaurant” to “Ghost Pepper is dead from massive head trauma” in only a month, which in soap opera strip terms is like one of those extremely brief periods of time that you only need to even think about when discussing the decay of subatomic particles. Maybe the point is to accelerate the crime-adventure-dead criminal cycle, and if we’re not going to see villains eaten alive by rats anymore, at least what we lose in the baroque nature of their deaths we’ll make up for in sheer quantity.