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Dustin, 6/24/23

Being a diagnosable Twitter addict, like I am, is not particularly rewarding, but it does provide you with a few fairly useless special powers. The ranks of Twitter addicts are fairly small — the number of daily users has never matched networks like Facebook or Instagram or TikTok — but is disproportionally made up of journalists and academics and tech “thought leaders,” so ideas and memes that originate on Twitter often eventually leak out into the real, non-Twitter, world, so one of those aforementioned useless powers is the ability to spot one of the aforementioned ideas/memes and think “Oh, no, this bastard is inflicting a bad Twitter thing on the hapless normies.” For a while, one of the bad Twitter things has been accounts that post pictures of Eastern European models in various contrived everyday situations accompanied with text like “You encounter this beautiful woman in the market. What is your romantic approach?” The goal for these accounts is either to push pickup artist bullshit or just get enough followers so that they can eventually pivot to crypto scam artistry, and I regret to inform you that it appears that at least someone at Dustin HQ has been sucked in.

Dick Tracy, 6/24/23

Dick Tracy hasn’t gone in for nightmarish ultraviolence in years, but current the creative team still likes to unsettle and disturb in their own way, like by offering unpleasant closeups of normal human mouths in action.

Hi and Lois, 6/24/23

This is a good addition to my “Hi and Lois is embracing Thirsty’s characterization as the neighborhood drunk” files. Honestly, the combination of the bright red nose and the fact that he’s clearly passed out in his lawn chair with his mouth hanging open while children gawk at him is a little too much! Getting a little grim! Might want to ratchet it back!

Judge Parker, 6/24/23

Good news, everyone! Sam and Abbey are going off on a trip together to have sex! Sam’s wearing a dumb baseball hat and they almost-matched their ecru shirts because that’s the sort of bland shit that really gets them going, I guess. Hopefully we’ll be treated to the same uncanny flavor of sexuality that marked their last recorded erotic encounter.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/24/23

“Oh, wow, you’ve managed to parry exactly one question with a confident but unquantified assertion. I’m sold!”

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Dick Tracy, 6/16/23

Dick Tracy is, indeed, a rich tapestry: one of its supporting characters, Diet Smith, is a wealthy scientist whose inventions have conquered both space and time, which led to sci-fi adventures on the Moon (whose people are now hiding in Antarctica), but the strip’s world also has room for comical rustics like the Plenty family with their old-timey phones and in-home poultry. These two storylines have collided both in Dick’s family, because his son married Moon Maid, the Moon Governor’s daughter, who later got blown up by car bomb, and then he married Sparkle Plenty, Gertie and B.O.’s daughter, but then Moon Maid came back and everyone got uncomfortable for a while until it turned out she was just a gangster’s girlfriend modified with moon DNA and forbidden science. Whew! That’s quite enough Dick Tracy backstory for the moment, so we’ll have to leave for another time the questions of whether the Moon Governor is aware that he’s named a new space coup after his dead daughter’s widower’s second wife, or why he uses “M.G.” as his initials. (Is “Moon Governor” his name?)

Pluggers, 6/16/23

All of us, pluggers and cosmopolitans a like, define ourselves and our tribes in part in terms of the qualities and habits in the Other that we lack. I am surely guilty of this in my many comments on the Pluggers syndicated newspaper panel, but I feel confident the panels themselves engage in the same practice, and I cannot look at this one without assuming that your typical plugger thinks my razor blades, my face, and indeed my entire coastal elite bathroom are simply awash in blood.

Judge Parker, 6/16/23

[extremely “LET’S GET READY TO RUMMMMMMBLE” voice] LET’S GET READY FOR THE SUMMER 2023 JUDGE PARKER POLYCUUUUUUUULE

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Dustin, 6/7/23

I would hesitate to ever say you have to hand it to the syndicated comic strip Dustin, but you do have to hand it to the syndicated comic strip Dustin for making even imaginary conversations both hostile and confusing. Like, the whole point is that the donut is begging Dustin’s dad to eat it, right? Like it’s talking about how much he wants it (nonsexually) and basically offering itself up to be devoured. So why would Dustin’s dad yell “So there!” rather than “You’re right!” or “Thank you!” or something? Have years of work in the legal system and/or dealing with Dustin left him unable to conceive of any interaction that isn’t at its root adversarial?

Dick Tracy, 6/7/23

I love the sweet innocence of the hiring manager here. “Oh, maybe she just forgot! Maybe she got distracted, didn’t put on shoes, and then went outside and either got in her car, which she uses her feet to operate, or maybe walked or got on a bus or subway, then walked into this building, and never at any point noticed that she didn’t have shoes on, as she was coming in for a job interview. That’s probably the most likely explanation.” Anyway, I guess I buy that if you hold “I worship Mother Earth and keep in touch with her” as a belief system, you might think you should go around barefoot, but I’m not sure why, if you think that Mother Earth can feel you through the depressing industrial carpet and the several layers of subflooring and foundation underneath this call center, throwing a comfy pair of Keds into the mix would really make all that much difference.