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Dick Tracy, 2/22/13

Long-time readers will remember when Dick Tracy was a staple of these pages, back before a new team, narrative coherence, and really sumptuous art (go back and look at that first panel again; I’ll wait) put an end to that. So it’s nice of them to toss in an grisly death now and again, just for us old-timers. Thanks, guys — BEROWH!

Judge Parker, 2/22/13

Ha ha, so L’il Judge Randy’s going to tell his fiancée — a well-equipped professional assassin with a hair-trigger temper and history of gun violence returning from covert wet work in some Middle East hot spot — that their honeymoon will trap them on a boat with Mom ‘n’ Pop, the very people she planned to escape by eloping, swearing him to secrecy. Sam’s concerns are misplaced — L’il Judge won’t live to see cocktail hour, let alone Mexico. Work it like a claw, and call him mincemeat.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/22/13

The Scarlet Letter meets Welcome to the Monkey House. Those townsfolk will be mighty surprised when Reverend Dimmesdale shows up with a scarlet “D-” on his chest — the mercy grade Hester gave him so he wouldn’t try to retake the course.

Edge City, 2/22/13

Obsessive neurotic Abby Ardin finally found a personal trainer well-suited to her capabilities and goals, and promptly stopped exercising. Husband Len sizes up the situation perceptively, but both irony and correction are lost on Abby.

Hi and Lois, 2/22/13

Lois, check out the the Cubs memorabilia and the Dylan, Who, and Led Zeppelin posters: this guy is your Dad.

Just a reminder – no Comments of the Week on my watch. Look for them when Josh gets back Sunday or, you know, whenever.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Herb and Jamaal, 1/31/13

So, when does a comic make the jump from “funny little joke about life’s foibles” to “horribly depressing”? In the case of today’s Herb and Jamaal, that moment came when the artist decided to add such vivid emotion to Sarah’s face in panel one, as she briefly mistakes Herb’s clumsy reach for the lamp as an attempt to touch her affectionately. Is he going to hug me? Could this actually lead to sex? Haha, don’t be silly, Sarah, you’ve reached a “comfortable” point in your marriage, if you define “comfort” as “a cold, numbing absence of strong feelings of any kind.”

Dick Tracy, 1/31/13

I think traditionally Dick Tracy has used arrow-box-labels to identify the bits of gee-whiz technology the strip’s law-enforcement characters usually deploy. But since things like two-way wrist radios have now been superseded by boring, ordinary cell phones, I guess they’re just now going to be pointing out random objects. Architectural details in early 20th century mausoleums? Skeletons inside said mausoleums, which is exactly the sort of place you’d expect a skeleton to be? Sure, why not!

Spider-Man, 1/31/13

Say, what’s our good friend the Amazing Newspaper Spider-Man been up to since he was physically present when Kraven’s plot was foiled? Well, after finding out that one of his old nemeses was up to his old tricks in San Francisco, he decided to hitchhike from Las Vegas to San Francisco, because of poverty. (Isn’t MJ making decent money as a Broadway actress, enough to subsidize a bus trip or perhaps even coach-class plane travel? Maybe she quite wisely refuses to give him access to her bank account.) Then the guy who picked him up tried to rob him at gunpoint, and then he crushed the barrel of the gun with his bare hands, without the usual seven strips of agonizing about “oh, no, my secret identity,” presumably because whatever happens on I-15 several hours outside of Vegas stays on I-15 several hours outside of Vegas. Today’s strip made me laugh because of how devastated our ne’er-do-well is at the prospect of spending a few minutes looking for his keys in a roadside ditch. I’m thinking if you threaten someone with a gun and he turns out to have superhuman strength, this is probably one of the better possible outcomes?

Slylock Fox, 1/31/13

“So, what’re you doing, bro? I’m just gettin’ baked, makin’ calls on my fuzzy phone, and taking a bath in a tub full of pancake batter.”

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Heathcliff, 1/18/13

I am seriously puzzled about just what exactly Heathcliff’s puppet-thing is supposed to be. The holes (or are they just black dots?) and the general shape and the proximity to mice remind me of a stereotypical wedge of cartoon Swiss cheese that the colorists have misjudged into greenness. But perhaps not? Maybe it’s some sort of weird makeshift sponge-puppet? I’m a little resentful about the ambiguity, because it’s distracting me from the delightful main point of the strip, which is that Heathcliff rules the local mice as a brutal dictator, demanding not just that they obey him in deed, but that they love him, deep in their souls. Heathcliff’s second-rate ventriloquist antics are in fact an elaborate test of loyalty. The two unhappy mice in the back of the queue here will soon be reported by informers to his brutal Happiness Police.

Judge Parker, 1/18/13

Judge Parker’s seems to be on the verge of a new plot that will test the philosophical boundaries of its own fictional universe. Specifically, it will answer the question we’ve all wondered about: is there a sum of money so large that it can, when spent, actually have a noticeable effect on the balance sheet of the Spencer-Driver clan? Keep in mind that Neddy, Sam and Abbey’s daughter, is a college student, and yet today’s strip reveals that she has her own private banker. One assumes that, in order for this to even get on her parents’ radar, these “large withdrawals” involved a fleet of armored trucks guarded by elite French special forces troops.

Dick Tracy, 1/18/13

Wow, it turns out I my interpretation of Lake Freedom’s significance was all wrong! Because it turns out that underneath Lake Freedom there’s an internment camp. That’s symbolism, guys, symbolism about America, really makes you think, hmm?

Spider-Man, 1/18/13

Sometimes conventional law enforcement in the Newspaper Spider-Man world is also super-incompetent, probably mostly to make Spidey feel better about himself.