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Archive: Dick Tracy

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Actively sad that we aren’t going to see General Halftrack get tased

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Mary Worth, 4/12/17

Panel one of today’s Mary Worth is a great illustration of why I love Mary Worth and soap opera strips in general, which I realize makes me sound insane but isn’t it nice that we’ve all found each other, friends? Anyway, what makes it great is that it offers a deep dive into the midset of someone who’s deciding to sit down. “Hmm, I’ve been holding my body vertically and using my legs to move from place to place for some time … but what if I were to lower myself onto one of these pieces of furniture, which seem to have been explicitly designed for that purpose? Why, it seems obvious that I’d expend less energy that way, albeit at the price of remaining stationary for a limited period of time! What do I have to lose?”

Beetle Bailey, 4/12/17

The art in Beetle Bailey has always been, uh, let’s say deliberately simplistic. This means that Miss Buxley’s standard-issue Little Black Dress is actually just an excuse to draw an hourglass figure and then fill in most of it from neck to thighs with the paintcan tool in Photoshop. But for today’s joke (“joke”) to work (“work”), she needed to looks stunning. More stunning than usual. And so, in dedication to their craft (“craft”), the employees of Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC have taught themselves to draw cleavage. Heroic efforts all around here!

Dick Tracy, 4/12/17

Meanwhile, over in Dick Tracy, there are, uh, two ladies named Margie, with ironic nicknames, and … the programs for the convention are here???? I will bring you more reports as this fraught situation develops.

Gil Thorp, 4/12/17

Oh God … her hand … with each high five it has absorbed the life force of the hands it strikes against … growing more powerful … larger … already it’s big enough to reach from her forehead to her sternum … and nothing can stop it … nothing … oh God it’s already too late

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Heroic Monday

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Mark Trail, 4/10/17

Welp, looks like Mark’s very self-important reveal of his employer has gone right over the bald head of his kidnapper. Sorry, Mark! Usually when you tell people that you write articles for America’s #1 glossy lifestyle magazine for the aspirational outdoorsperson, they show some respect. Not so when you deal with illiterates and ruffians, it seems. And yet … who’s this gentleman in panel two? Is he the real power behind this criminal gang, one or two steps up the Bald Guy Hierarchy? He’s wearing a suit and tie and has a neatly folded pocket square, which means he no doubt appreciates long articles about, like, new kinds of tents or whatever the hell it is Woods and Wildlife publishes. Anyway, I’m not sure if this guy is really involved in our story, or if he’s just some fellow passing through Rapid City Airport, or if he’s the Kingpin, heralding a crossover event that will establish Mark Trail as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but his little smile shows that he knows what’s up.

Dick Tracy, 4/10/17

I had to laugh at the “YELLOW MASK” label in the final panel, an explanatory box of the sort usually reserved in Dick Tracy for tiny gadgets or whatever. Then I remembered that, in theory, anyway, the primary venue for Dick Tray comic strips is the daily paper, where they’re published in black-and-white, so the need to label the visual joke makes slightly more sense. “Look, it’s, uh, it’s a mask, that matches his coat, which you also can’t see the color of but we assume if you’re reading this you know it’s yellow? Just a mask, for his eyes. We know it’s a little confusing. He’s not supposed to stick his dick in it or anything.”

Spider-Man, 4/10/17

One thing that comics are good for is creating new Homeric epithets out of whole cloth and just pretending they’re things that normal people would say in real life, like “badge-boys!” I also like Spider-Man acknowledging that while being a police officer is a full-time job, being Spider-Man is just kind of a hobby he indulges whenever he feels like it, because with great power comes great responsibility so long as there’s nothing good on TV.

Dennis the Menace, 4/10/17

I’m pretty sure that a young child putting his most treasured possessions in the collection plate at church is … about as non-menacing as you can get? Unless he’s trying to bribe God! That’s fairly menacing, theologically speaking.

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Ceci n’est pas une croque monsieur

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Mark Trail, 3/6/17

Mark Trail has had exactly three writer-artists in its 71-year existence — Ed Dodd, Jack Elrod, and James Allen — and Elrod and Allen both spent extensive periods assisting their predecessors before taking over the strip. Other soap strips have seen a higher turnover in syndicate-hired personnel, and I have it on good authority that, in the absence of organized archives, some of those writers resorted to using my blog’s archives for backstory on the strips they were taking over; but Mark Trail has institutional memory when it comes to the lore, man. That’s why the strip is able to casually bring back recurring characters like fecund Quebecker Johnny Malotte, who’s been around since at least the early ’50s. So even though I’ve been reading Mark Trail every day for the last 15 years and have never heard of Johnny Lone Elk (hmmm, Mark sure knows a lot of non-WASPy guys named “Johnny”), I have full confidence that the Water-World Theme Park Disaster was a real storyline that was published in newspapers, probably in the ’70s sometime, and was extremely hilarious. I am jazzed up for this next adventure, guys.

Hagar the Horrible, 3/6/17

I honestly love how Gus maintains his weirdly bug-eyed smiling expression even through Hagar’s blurted question in the third panel. You’d better believe there’s no ham sandwich, Hagar. There’s nothing Gus loves so much as blowing people’s damn minds.

Dick Tracy, 3/6/17

There are any number of hilarious things about this strip: The Spirit sleeps in his eye mask and white gloves! The Spirit has a bedside princess phone in his hotel! The Spirit thinks that a normal, comfortable way to talk on the phone is to lie face down on the bed and sort of rest the handset against the side of his head! Still, I’m a little disappointed that my initial interpretation of panel one, which as that the Spirit slept wearing a CPAP machine, turned out to be incorrect.

Slylock Fox, 3/6/17

Oh wow, it seems the colorists for today’s strip, in which notorious person of (green) color Count Weirdly implements an incompetent terrorist attack on a ceremony honoring law enforcement, have decided to suddenly portray him as Caucasian! Way to promote #whitgenocide, Slylock Fox.