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Happy New Year, faithful readers! I have returned from my year’s end journey and am ready to amuse you once more with my comic-mocking wit, which I’ve been inflicting on you all for ten years now and which I’ll never stop ever, probably. As usual, I intended to take a break from the (electronic simulacrum of the) funny pages over vacation, but upon return felt compelled to catch up with my beloved soaps and some of the other strips, and have curated the best and dumbest here for you!

Dick Tracy, 12/25/14

In one of several plots I haven’t been keeping you updated on in Dick Tracy, Dick’s son Junior and his wife Sparkle Plenty are having a baby! Which was apparently delivered on Christmas Day, accompanied by a biblical quotation implying heavily that Dick’s new grandchild is the new Messiah, the Anointed One who will usher in God’s Kingdom on Earth. Will Dick resist the new divine order with all the violence at his disposal, or will he serve as the agent of his holy Descendent, mostly by shooting His or Her enemies?

Gil Thorp, 12/25/14

In a treasured Gil Thorp holiday tradition, Gil and Mimi pose for a Christmas picture that does not include the hideously ugly children they used to have.

Judge Parker, 12/25/14

Judge Parker wished us a Merry Christmas from the eerily empty Sonoron Desert, which, with any luck, our heroes’ RV will soon wander into, only to break down again, leaving them exposed to the elements.

Apartment 3-G, 12/25/14

On Christmas Day, Margo showed the true holiday spirit: she knows there’s no greater gift a boss can give her harried and almost certainly underpaid employee than to allow him to buy her dinner.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/26/14

“Either way, it’s definitely going to be your fault when I relapse! Aren’t you glad you came back?”

Mary Worth, 12/26/14

Mary Worth’s promotion of a healthy and active sexual lifestyle for seniors has now dovetailed with its firm belief in filial piety. Remember, it’s acceptable for a mother to cockblock her daughter, but not vice-versa.

(Also, psst, speaking of Mary Worth, faithful reader Wanders’s Mary Worth And Me blog is hosting the Annual Worthy Awards! Go over and vote!)

Mark Trail, 12/26/14

Wait, Mitchum, didn’t you hire local thugs in order to keep your fingerprints (both metaphorical and literal) off of this brutal crime you have planned? And here you are showing your face to your victims! Whatever you do, don’t explain to everyone who you are and why you’re doing this!

Mark Trail, 12/27/14

God damn it, Mitchum.

Curtis, 12/29/14

Traditionally, this time of year Curtis graces us with a nutty Kwanzaa storyline, featuring things like bat-winged bears and giant telepathic otters and adorable tiny primates stabbing witches in the neck. Unfortunately, this year in lieu of such delightful madness, we are instead getting days and days of Curtis’s dad sitting on the couch and kvetching about how Kwanzaa is getting so commercialized these days, which, in addition to being super boring, is, I’m reasonably sure, not even remotely true.

Mark Trail, 12/30/14

I guess Mitchum and his thugs are wearing matching shirts as a sort of Eco-Terrorism False Flag Uniform, but for a brief moment I had hoped that, upon deciding to punch Mark, Mitchum’s hair peeled off the top of his head to form the bald-ponytail combo in panel three — that his decision to assault our hero had in other words caused him to literally flip his lid.

Apartment 3-G, 1/1/15

Margo Magee’s management secrets … revealed!!!

Mary Worth, 1/2/15

Welp, it looks like Hanna and Amy aren’t so apocalyptically angry at each other anymore, and Hanna is using her powers of witchcraft to summon up an image of her new boyfriend for her daughter to admire. Meanwhile, though, Gordon has been reunited with his true love, the television set.

And I have returned to my true love: entertaining all of you! Normal-style comics blogging resumes tomorrow! Happy 2015, and may God have mercy on our souls!

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Heathcliff, 10/21/14

I genuinely love that Heathcliff’s owner-child has been so defeated by his cat’s weird, off-putting text-flag antics that he doesn’t even draw attention to them as he walks resignedly home. “Yep, that’s our house. The one with the cat outside it. The meat house. We’re the meat house today, I guess. Better than being the meh house. Yeah, meat, the house is like, made of meat, or full of meat, or something meat, I dunno. Do you wanna hang out together after school again tomorrow? No? That’s OK, I totally understand.”

Blondie, 10/21/14

I genuinely love how sad Dagwood looks in panel three. He’s never once stopped Elmo from just wandering into his house and doing whatever he wants, so presumably he’s bummed out because now his teenage daughter is going to be married to a prepubescent child and there’s nothing he can do about it.

Dick Tracy, 10/21/14

Having finally wrapped up its Little Orphan Annie crossover fake time travel story, Dick Tracy has clearly concluded that mid-20th century nostalgia is the core of its brand. So, why not just spend the next three to six months re-enacting all of Arsenic and Old Lace? I loved that movie, didn’t you?

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Gil Thorp, 8/30/14

Oh ha ha, a nationally-ranked star quarterback just fell into Gil’s lap because Valley Tech “didn’t feel right” or some such B.S. Panel-2 Gil can barely suppress his glee (that’s Gil glee – trust me on this). With True on board, he’ll be able to bluff his way through the entire season and still win a game or two; maybe even make the playdowns. Of course rivalries will tear his team apart and his betrayal will scar his young charges for life, but let’s keep our eye on the bigger picture here, shall we?

Dick Tracy, 8/30/14

In their vulnerable moments, even law-abiding citizens of peaceful countries can be overcome by dark paranoid fantasies in which armed officers chuckle as they blithely ignore law and principle in service to their wealthy masters. For more than 80 years, it has been the role of Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie to present this paranoid hellscape as a kind of utopia.

Citizens! Don’t let the face of Sam Catchem be the last face you see! Comply!

Apartment 3-G, 8/30/14

I bow to no one — not even the Comics Curmudgeon himself — in my devotion to Apartment 3-G, which I have been following since the Kennedy administration, and daily for the last eight years. But when I saw today’s strip, I realized I had absolutely no memory of this “Rick” (Tommie’s recently deceased fiancé was named Jim). That implies that Rick is unmemorable even by the standards of Apartment 3-G men — a sort of black hole of interest from which nothing can escape. A long grind through the archives yielded this image from the March 2012 “Tommie is going to be a singer or some damn thing” story, so yup:

Apartment 3-G, 3/9/12

The steady degeneration of Tommie’s boyfriends brings a chilling thought. What if all this didn’t begin in May, 1961, but further back — say, at the Dawn of Time? Imagine Tommie as not a woman but as Woman Herself: Eve, Helen of Troy, Mary Magdalene, Cleopatra, Wu Hou, Jeanne d’Arc, Nzinga Mbande, Pocahontas, Florence Nightingale, Colette, Lucille Ball, Eva Perón — all hanging around with the likes of Gary from IT, ol’ Doc Buckethead, and this “Rick” here. It’s disgusting.

Mary Worth, 8/30/14

Predictably, Dr. Drew has been secretly replaced by some kind of insane judgmental robot, condemning his fellow doctors as much for their humanity as for their errors. He seems quite certain about Kaphut’s fate, probably because he plans to carry it out himself.

Mary’s point, of course, is that Kaphut should suffer worse than merely being torn apart by a crazed homicidal machine, even though such a thing is not possible. That way both Drew and Kaphut come up short, so it’s win-win in her book.

Splashdown — in Austin! Midway through their 3,000-mile trip, with a well-earned day of loafing ahead. Then off again, into the searing West Texas heat.

— Uncle Lumpy