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Marmaduke, 10/8/10

Local authorities and various torch-wielding vigilante mobs have, when faced with the horror that is Marmaduke, often demanded that KILL IT OH MY GOD KILL IT’S A MONSTER KILL IT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY. But the governor’s team of top scientific advisors have determined that attempting to “kill” Marmaduke will only cut his tenuous connection to a mortal, physical form, transforming him into a malevolent, destructive force of pure energy that can not be stopped or contained. Thus the executive orders to maintain the admittedly terrifying status quo.

Dick Tracy, 10/8/10

Oh my God, Dick Tracy has stumbled onto a cadre of Communist hobos! This makes the hobo-eradication program he conducts in his off hours totally justified, retroactively!

Funky Winkerbrean, 10/8/10

“What I’m trying to say is, if you manage to suppress your wholly baffling attraction to him, you won’t be turning your back on the troops and God and America and freedom. He’s just a drunk with really bad luck! Wanna see my stump? The stump that WALLY MADE?”

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Hey all, just a head’s up: I’ve updated the posting and discussion policies for the site, mostly to reflect and explain how I already run things around here anyway. If you’ve never read this, read it, and even if you have, check out the updates, particularly the new FAQ/Socratic dialogue I’ve added that will hopefully be illuminating about how not to get banned/yelled at!

And now, on to comics.

Dick Tracy, 9/30/10

Is it possible to construct a more delightful phrase than “Dick Tracy, undercover hobo”? I believe the answer to that question to be a firm “no,” but only because no English word-sequence can truly convey the awesomeness of panel one, where Dick’s eyes glow hypnotically out of his shadowy, bearded face. Dick’s gone undercover among the scruffy unhoused set to track down a bum who’s handing out thousand-dollar bills. As a homeless man handing out thousand-dollar bills would in all likelihood be almost immediately robbed and murdered, but just in case that isn’t in process, Dick makes sure to shout out his location as loudly as possible, for no good reason.

Mary Worth, 9/30/10

Desperate for some way to enliven this offensively smug scene, the Mary Worth artist distracts us with wacky perspective shifts. Panel two, for instance, caters to every reader’s fantasy by showing what it would look like to be a master assassin lurking in the bushes across the street, watching Mary and Jeff through the scope of a high-powered rifle, and waiting for the perfect moment to pull the trigger.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/30/10

Oh, Elviney (if that is your name — I’m pretty sure it is but I don’t feel like looking it up), why do you sigh so? Is it a sigh like “Oh, that tired old chestnut?” A sigh like, “Darn, I was hoping for some effective weight-loss tips from my portly friend?” Or a sigh like, “Good lord, all of us in this blighted hamlet are so very poor and hungry?”

Wizard of Id, 9/30/10

Ha ha! It’s funny because Floyd died terribly, for no good reason!

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Gasoline Alley, 9/24/10

Even beyond the bus plunge trope beloved of generations of lead-type print journalists, the current Gasoline Alley plot is chock full of old-timey goodness:

• Sound effects in dialect — “Kee-rash”, y’all! “Smootch”!

• Regionalisms — “Let’s don’t”, like Louisiana’s “might could”, Josh’s beloved upstate N.Y. “pop”, and the “bubbler” (water fountain) of my own Milwaukee roots.

• Agricultural sexuality — Rural kids don’t have much patience for courtly love. But Rover won’t fall for Miss Chris’s comely charms either, considering what’s waiting at home.

• Picaresque plotlines — A forgotten lunch, excess cell-phone use, failed brakes, missing spare, sudden infatuation: what us know-it-all city-folk call “incoherent.”

Blondie, 9/24/10

OK, cartoonists, listen up. It’s wonderful that you’ve got friends and neighbors, and peachy that they give to charity and get married and whatnot, but won’t you please, please stop sticking them in your comics? Your audience doesn’t give a rip about these people, and they always look creepy and out of place. This is not how to treat friends and neighbors in print.

Sally Forth, 9/23/10

This is how to treat friends and neighbors in print.

Dick Tracy, 9/24/10

Chief Liz is right. In fact, Dick will eventually fool himself, arrest himself for vagrancy, and then die a grisly and mysterious death at his own hands while in self-custody. His last words will be a lame wisecrack about how he died. At the funeral, friends will say, “He would have wanted it this way”, and they’ll be right, too.

— Uncle Lumpy