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Dick Tracy, 10/30/16

I was a little dubious when Dick Tracy introduced what I assume is supposed to be a Millennial character, a guy who is a narcissist and keeps taking selfies and also is named “Selfy Narcisse.” But now it turns out that he regularly takes his car out on sweet jumps over drawbridges right as they open? I guess the kids are at least somewhat all right, after all!

Funky Winkerbean, 10/30/16

Whoops, seems I totally failed to recognize Cindy in yesterday’s strip! Anyway, Cindy and Mason are definitely not living in a world of denial that will soon be shattered by the inevitable progress of time, at all.

Hi and Lois, 10/30/16

Ha ha, it’s funny because Lois is wracked with anxiety that for some reason is manifesting itself as jack o’ lantern perfectionism, and it’s so bad that her entire family is scared and upset!

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Mark Trail, 10/15/16

And it’s an invasive wild boar – the very worst kind! What’s more, he’s either a really ROUGH sort, or a real GROUCH – it’s hard to tell from context. Maybe both!

But hey waitaminute: what are wild boars doing on a volcanic atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? I’m guessing they weren’t carried ashore in bundles of firewood like the ants. Maybe the neo-Aztecs who built the mountaintop temple imported boars for sacrifice until the boars figured out the deal and turned the tables?

Most likely it’s all a plot by Abbey Powell’s sinister “U.S. Department of Agriculture.” Alarmed by the invasion of fire ants, they brought in Formosan termites to control them. This turned out to be a terrible mistake. So they shipped in “beneficial” nematodes, which promptly started eating all the coral. The marine iguanas they imported to kill the nematodes quickly overwhelmed the beaches, so they airlifted in packs of boars and here we are. In a desperate attempt, Abbey has conned Mark Trail to come in and punch the boars into submission. I hope it works, because the next step is nuclear weapons.

Dick Tracy, 10/15/16

When someone is killed for persecuting an ethnic group with exactly two members, the police know where to start their investigation. When both of those members are friends or relatives of Dick Tracy, they have a pretty good idea where to stop it, too.

Phantom, 10/15/16

OK, so the Phantom has one of those Lone Ranger-style “see my unmasked face and die” gimmicks going on, and it apparently includes his wife??? Brrr….

Maybe he only goes all shadowy like this when we’re watching, which frankly hurts my feelings a little bit. Dude, we’re your fans. We stuck with you through Hide the Lion. We toughed it out through The College Kid — that’s gotta count for something. How ’bout a little peek at them baby blues?

Judge Parker, 10/15/16

OK, now that Bob Dylan has his Nobel Prize we’d better get used to the fact that Boomer culture is universal culture everywhere and forever.

At 77, ’60’s icon Spencer Davis (Gimme Some Lovin’) is old enough enough to work at Neddy’s factory, but not desperate enough for her starvation wages. From his retreat on California’s Catalina Island, he writes:

♬

Well, the factory’s collapsing, got a hole in the floor
Canes and walkers clacking on their way to the door
Let me through granny, I don’t want to be entombed
And you better hobble quicker, ’cause this place is doomed.

And I sure hope you make it — we olds can’t take it
You’ve got to: gimme some running (gimme, gimme some running)
Gimme some crushing, (gimme, gimme some crushing)
Gimme some shoving everyday.
Hey hey.

Hi there, faithful reader! I’m sitting in through Sunday the 23rd while Josh takes a break. Please let me know if you experience any access or comment-posting problems at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net. Enjoy!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Dick Tracy, 10/12/16

Shoutout to this Dick Tracy storyline for getting me more emotionally involved in the strip than I have been in years, if by “emotionally involved” you mean “researching U.S. nationality law and/or Dick Tracy’s byzantine backstory,” which I most certainly do! So, is Honeymoon Tracy an illegal alien? Well, she was born in outer space, but her father was an American and her parents were married at the time of her birth, so it seems clear that she was born a U.S. citizen, and attempting to revoke that citizenship based on her Lunarian descent would probably fall afoul of the Constitutional ban on ex post facto laws, to say nothing of the equal protection clause. Sorry, Rep. Bellowthon! You’d really do better with the vigilante angle. Why not investigate vigilantism in Neo-Chicago? You’d probably take down the whole rotten police force in the process!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/12/16

You know, I joked about what a relief the Morgans’ document-signing montage was, but the non-montaged unpacking that followed has been a perfect example of why it was so sorely needed. FUN FACT WE LEANRED TODAY: did you guys know that the Morgans have four separate grades of dishes??? So interesting!!!!!!!! Seriously, these details better have some payoff later to justify this dullness (suggestion: haunted dishes).

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/12/16

“Ya can just let th’ leaves cover ya, until you disappear!! Nobody can see ya, and ya cain’t see nobody!! Eventually death takes ya peacefully, the way ya always dream’d of!!”