Dick Tracy has moved on from the “lives shattered and corpses mangled” section of the storyline to the “valuable lessons learned” portion. Liz’s ham-handed soliloquy — “Yes, Tracy, robots have a place in police work” — sounds like the sort of self-congratulatory statement you’d hear when someone in an after-school special overcomes terrible prejudice, though in this case that prejudice is against improbable, l33t-speaking robots that despite their crime-fighting value will have only occasional appearances in future installments of this strip.
Meanwhile, in typical Dick Tracy mangled-time fashion, the final panel of the last three strips has consisted of Diet Smith offering then refusing to help Dick’s wife over the phone. This is unfortunate, because it has forced us to repeatedly look at the inventor’s grotesque baby-like face.
Beetle Bailey, 12/13/08
Say, what’s more embarrassing than having only three comics acknowledge your 90th anniversary? Having a fourth add its own feeble contribution nearly three weeks after the fact, of course! That 19-day gap is, to the best of my knowledge, shorter than the lead time for strip publication, so it’s not like Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Enterprises LLC saw those tribute strips on November 24 and suddenly lurched into action, but I can’t offer an alternative explanation for this delayed tribute. Perhaps there’s some dispute as to the actual launch date of the strip back in the mists of time, and we’ll be seeing tributes to Gasoline Alley’s continued zombie existence dribbling out over the comics pages for weeks to come.
So, the last time I ranted about the overarchingly gross “sexiness” in Luann, a commentor claimed that, because I’m obviously a horny male type, I was primarily angered by the strip’s refusal to reward Brad with sexual access to Toni (and Gunther with the same to Luann). Obviously I have not been getting my point across, as nothing could be further from the truth; in fact, there are few things that I would find more distasteful, on both an aesthetic and an emotional level, than the prospect of Brad having sex.
Here’s what drives me batty about this strip’s treatment of romantic relationships: everything’s all presented to us as if its something that’s supposed to make us all hot and bothered, and yet it’s not erotically charged at all, both because of the need to stay within the strict bounds of newspaper strip acceptable content rules and because of the extreme hamhandedness of it all. The fact that it all reinforces the whole “Women are mysterious and manipulative and men are doomed to be trapped forever in their sexual thrall” thing just adds some extra ick.
I’d dearly love nothing more than to stop thinking about the sexual lives of the characters in Luann, but it seems like every other storyline in the strip is entirely about their sexual lives, veiled by this layer of propriety that’s all the more baffling considering how blatant the winking and nudging is. The result is that it’s like a dirty joke told by an ten year old, today’s example being a prime example. “Hey, Toni, I was just thinking about you because … melons! Ha ha! Get it? Because they look like… you know! Ha!” Christ.
I had an epiphany the other day, actually, that what it all most reminds me of is the classic SNL “Tales of Ribaldry” sketch, in which Jon Lovitz plays a regency-era fop who gets hilariously worked up by hints at sex but becomes outraged when actual sex starts occurring — and whaddya know, thanks the magic of the Internet, you can actually stream those old sketches from NBC, totally legally, so here’s one for those of you too young/old/classy to remember:
Anyway, this has been a mostly unfunny rant, and I promise not to revisit the subject again unless I have something amusing to say about it. I was mostly excited that “Tales of Ribaldry” was actually available online, and had to express my displeasure about the melons. Melons! Seriously. Melons.
Gil Thorp, 12/8/08
Wait … what? Is this a new Gil Thorp storyline, all of the sudden? I’m sure Ashley Aiello and her box of NUT BOY (“It’s Nutty!” is what I hope that says on that box) will be very interesting and all, but usually at the end of football season we at least get some sort of acknowledgement of the team’s annual failure to win a championship of any sort. I won’t honestly miss Gil rubbing the back of his massive, square head ruefully while attempting to cast the blame on someone else, I suppose, but I do demand narrative satisfaction on the conclusion of the Marty Moon gets fired and replaced by punk kids arc. That mysterious, shadowy figure in the first panel had better be Marty, despondant and prepared to buy every bottle of anything even vaguely intoxicating that the 24-7 SwiftiMart stocks, including NyQuil and lighter fluid.
Dick Tracy, 12/8/08
Whenever Dick Tracy says “Time to pick up the pieces,” the “pieces” in question are the mutilated body parts of his enemies, obviously.
Apartment 3-G, 12/8/08
Margo literally does not know what Detective Collins is talking about, because the only bit of drug terminology known to her or any of her acquaintances is “dope.”
Since I’m in a vaguely good mood today, let me say something nice about the art in Dick Tracy: The art in Dick Tracy is really pretty good. Today’s strip strikes me as a particularly fine example of how Locher uses blacks and whites to very striking effect — no endless slathers of zip-a-tone here! I love the shocked face of Braces’ henchwoman in panel three quite a lot — it looks like a print, or a woodcut, and I think it could stand alone as a sort of minor pop art masterpiece.
Of course, all this visual appeal is deployed in the service of violence and insanity. At long last, we learn today why villain-of-the-month Braces has braces — so that his dismembered robot could electrocute him through them, obviously. Remember, no Dick Tracy storyline can end until somebody dies in agony.
Gil Thorp, 12/3/08
Speaking of violence and insanity, check out panel three of today’s Gil Thorp. You can try to tell me that we’re seeing the Mudlarks put a short running play into action to get that first down, but if that’s the case, why isn’t number 22 holding the ball? Why does the Valley Tech player in the middle of the panel look like he’s about to shiv someone, and why is the Milford player just to right of him clawing one of his opponents’ eyes out? No, it’s clear that this game has completely collapsed into an anarchic brawl. Assistant Coach Kaz (recongizable by his now-almost-sedate earrings), with his well-known propensity for savagery, cannot be counted on to put a stop to this madness; indeed, his defensive corps (whom he has reduced to mindless obedience by refusing to acknowledge them as individuals) will soon run onto the field to join in the melee.
Crock, 12/3/08
Yes, I’m sure the US tax authorities are very interested in auditing the income of a French military officer, stationed in North Africa.
