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Archive: Dick Tracy

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They should be marketing a whole line of corpse-guy Successories posters honestly

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Dick Tracy, 1/23/24

I think it’s sweet that these two ladies keep a poster of their deceased corpse-guy (he was a corpse-guy before he was deceased, to be clear) mentor/lover(?) around. Still, I don’t know how he’d feel about having extremely generic aphorisms attributed to him in response to extremely specific situations like “I accidentally poisoned the wrong person but I need to continue to earn my living as a stage magician.”

Marvin, 1/23/24

The funny thing here is that we definitely know that Marvin didn’t buy that “I [heart] daddy” mug; probably it was Jenny, in a desperate attempt to convince her husband that their child is worthy of human affection. Anyway, she’s wrong, he isn’t, and Jeff is right to take this free vacation and Jenny should go with him. Honestly they should change their names and never come back!

Blondie, 1/23/24

A pretty good sign, I feel, that I’ve lived my life right is that when a photo goes viral of a guy at a Detroit Lions game eating a comically large sandwich, multiple people send it to me with some variation of “OMG it’s Dagwood!” Anyway, I’m pretty sure Dr. Austin kept saying “oh my” has he brought increasingly advanced instruments to bear on Dagwood’s torso, which all readings indicate isn’t full of guts like a normal human’s but just an endless, insatiable ~v o i d~

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Black suit/dark grey shirt is another warning sign

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Dick Tracy, 1/12/24

Yeah, yeah, blah blah blah, Tess is a private investigator and her agency deals with different aspects of the same shadowy underworld that her husband fights against and now it may cost her life, but get a load of panel two, which contains the most ominous and noir instance of someone taking a piping hot loaf of bread out of the oven in the history of baking. Dick knows that no matter how delicious fresh bread is and how satisfying and surprisingly easy it is to make it in your own home, the human heart is inherently rotten and no society can ever be free of the crime and corruption that only violence wielded in the name of the state can keep at bay.

Gil Thorp, 1/12/24

Now that Coach Hernandez has been tamed into friendship with Gil, we need a new bad guy, at least for this basketball season. Should it be this guy, a basketball coach with a perm? Yes, absolutely, 100%. Even during the brief heyday of perms on men in the ’80s, an NBA coach getting a perm was a pretty automatic indication that he was leaning into his role as a sinister villain. A bepermèd high school coach? In the year of our lord 2024? This guy’s a monster, a maniac. You’re making a deal with the devil, Howard!

Dennis the Menace, 1/12/24

Dennis dropping random malapropisms Family Circus-style is the weakest of menacing weaksauce, but it gets even weaker when those “malapropisms” are actually real words that people use in everyday life. I guess some people, such as the current creative team behind the legacy newspaper comic strip Dennis the Menace, had the privilege of not growing up in Buffalo, New York, and so the sort of weather conditions we endured several times a year sounds like something only a child could come up with in their wildest fatasies. Hope you enjoy heading out to the links in Palm Springs any time of year after sending this kind of bullshit to your editors! (Yes, I live in Southern California too, but I haven’t forgotten my roots.)

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“It’s for the drinks!” Oh, ok, that’s normal then, I guess

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Dick Tracy, 1/8/24

“Wait,” you’re probably thinking, “Why is that any better? Why is getting back at Dick Tracy by killing his wife somehow easier or less dangerous than killing Tracy himself?” Oh, so you think Tess Trueheart doesn’t have anything else going on other than being married to Dick Tracy that would merit someone putting a price on her head? Sexist much???? I don’t know what that might be, but I’m sure we’re going to find out! In the final panel, Rikki Mortis is relieved to learn that today’s Dick Tracy does in fact pass the Bechdel Test.

Hi and Lois, 1/8/24

It wasn’t till today that I realized that I take the zany antics in Beetle Bailey in stride but think of its sister strip Hi and Lois as being more “realistic” for whatever reason. If General Halftrack were erotically snuggling his golf bag I wouldn’t blink an eye, but in this strip, it feels like we’re seeing the end of a long and elaborate passive-aggressive argument that has led to Hi embarking on an extremely ill-advised bit that he can’t back out of now.

Six Chix, 1/8/24

Wouldn’t it be great if one of your party guests showed up with a bag full of neatly cubed human flesh? That’s what the syndicated newspaper comic strip Six Chix would have you believe, anyway.