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Gil Thorp, 11/26/09

Greetings, faithful readers! I hope those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving did so with your real friends, a whole bunch of beer bottles, and celebrated as our Pilgrim forefathers did, at a picnic table in some dark, lonely park somewhere.

Mark Trail, 11/26/09

Those of you who are criminals have a lot to be thankful for! Specifically, you can be thankful that in America’s forgiving justice system, you can go from being a law-breaker to being law-enforcement official simply by choosing exactly the right time to kick one of your erstwhile criminal associates in the face.

Dick Tracy, 11/27/09

As for me, I’m mostly thankful that Dick Tracy refers to any concert not performed by the U.S. Marine Corps Band or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir as “long hair stuff.”

Mark Trail, 11/29/09

And I’m also pleased that Mark Trail decided to pass over more obvious animals on Thanksgiving weekend and go for the deep’s more terrifying tentacled monsters, offering us in the process a lovely image of a nervous human approaching the rotting corpse of 50-foot-long giant squid and a giant depiction of a living squid of indeterminate size regarding us inscrutably from his watery lair. And, sure, the bottom left panel is a repeat of one from a previous squid-themed Mark Trail installment, but what of it? If I had produced an awesome drawing of dozens of squids flying through the air like a barrage of betentacled missiles, I’d run it every damn day if I could.

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Spider-Man, 11/20/09

It really shouldn’t come as surprise to anyone that the quality control over at the newspaper Spider-Man strip is less than stringent; but, as several faithful readers have written to me to point out, the feature appears to be reaching for stunning new levels of “Eh, why bother?” It seems that at some point this plotline’s pathetic villain has had his name switched from Bigshot to Bigtime. This is obviously troubling, not least because there was already a newspaper Spider-Man villain named Bigtime just last year. Worse, while Bigtime — who earned that moniker when his all-pervasive clock fetish matched up with his given name of Bigelow — seemed like a pretty lame nemesis for a superhero at the time, he’s like the love child of Catwoman and Lex Luthor when compared to Bigshot, who got his name because he’s short. It’s a sad day when your villainy suffers in comparison to someone whose crimes were entirely timepiece-themed.

Dick Tracy, 11/20/09

So this is something like the fourth separate and contradictory explanation that’s been offered for the events of this Dick Tracy plot — which explanations, I should add, have taken up more strip time than the events they are attempting to explain. This one makes even less sense than the others. In my experience, circuses tend to travel from place to place, and thus there’s no “property” to purchase, unless we’re talking about the actual tent itself, for which I’m guessing there isn’t a huge resale market. Cyber the tiger looks as enraged by this as anyone about all this, and I sincerely hope he (or she?) finally just eats everyone to shut them up.

Judge Parker, 11/20/09

I just had this bit of realization about this plot: Sam Driver is withholding information from the police about this note, and knowledge about this note could set his client free — his client who has terminal cancer and not long to live. Presumably he thinks it would be much more dramatic to reveal his ace card during the trial (“discovery”? what’s that?) in stunning and dramatic fashion than it would be to work the whole thing out now and let his client spend the last few weeks of his life with his family. In other words, Sam, never one to rest on his laurels, is working hard to secure the title of Dickiest Man Alive.

Ziggy, 11/20/09

I’ve always been disturbed by the fact that nightmarish gore-fests like Hostel or the Saw movies get R ratings while sexy flicks like Henry and June or The Dreamers get NC-17s, and now I have another reason to feel that way: this horoscope implies that Ziggy will not be violently murdered, but will rather participate in some no doubt queasy-making sex act.

Slylock Fox, 11/20/09

The final step when drawing a member of the proletariat: the honest grime of manual labor!

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Mary Worth, 11/16/09

So, it looks like Scott is going to be A-OK, now that Dr. Jeff has given him and his sexy legs the once-over! Adrian is of course a doctor as well, but her medico-vision was disabled by grief and estrogen, so it was important for Jeff to make sure. (A competent doctor who was not a relative or potential relative of the patient was unavailable, as Dr. Jeff has made sure that everyone who works with him at Santa Royale General is one of his cronies or offspring.)

Anyway, with a mighty MEANWHILE, our narration box thrusts us pell-mell into the next storyline, and panel two shows us why we keep tuning into this feature. Who is making a phone call, and to whom? Is it someone calling to tell Mary that she’s wearing a hideous canary-yellow skirt-suit just like the one Mary’s been wearing all week, presaging a “Single White Meddling Biddy” storyline? Let’s hope!

Dick Tracy, 11/16/09

Here is the ethical dilemma for me as a Dick Tracy reader: each and every storyline inevitably ends in a scene of gruesome violence — with people being electrocuted or torn to bits by vicious dogs or run over by bulldozers — that I am genuinely shocked and discomfited to find on the comics page. And yet the rest of the strip is so baffling and dull that these flesh-mangling episodes are all I feel that I have to look forward to in this feature. Thus, I’m feeling pretty cheated right now, because despite several months’ worth of foreshadowing, not a single person in this interminable circus storyline has been mauled by a tiger, despite many chances for such a thing to happen. One can only hope that the plot’s various ne’er-do-wells have been spared that fate so that Dick can line them up and shoot them in the face one by one.

Luann, 11/16/09

For the record, this is a bad idea because Brad will try too hard and screw everything up, plus TJ will attempt to seduce Brad’s mom. His whipped sweet potatoes will still be exquisite.

Curtis, 11/16/09

I have never claimed to some kind of consistency in my comics likes and dislikes. Thus, while Marvin’s endless poop-smeared antics repulse me, I will always laugh at jokes about Curtis’s little brother picking his nose with malice aforethought, especially when this is indicated by comical sound effects.

Hi and Lois, 11/16/09

I realize that “nostalgia music” was more or less necessary to set up the punchline here, but for full sneering-at-old-people effect, I prefer “dinosaur rock” myself.

Oh, and Vintage Guitar magazine? It exists, my friends. Order it now for the dinosaur rocker on your Christmas list!

Spider-Man, 11/16/09

Newspaper comic strip Spider-Man trufans have been enjoying this plot so far, but have been waiting with mounting anxiety for the moment when the plot will hinge on the non-functioning of an ordinary household electronic device. Never fear, faithful readers! You know this feature always comes through for you!

More Josh-on-the-radio news! If your local public radio station carries Dick Gordon’s “The Story,” I am on it, today, talking nostalgically about being laid off during the last recession! In the Baltimore area it’s on WYPR at 8 pm. I will post a link to the podcast when available!