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Mary Worth, 12/5/06

“That’s right, I won’t stop there! I’m also going to break out into this elaborately choreographed dance routine! ‘Hey fella … don’t see Ella … that’s my advice to yoooouuuuu … She’s no psychic … you won’t like it … She’s crazy, she’s old … and something of a scold!'”

I can’t wait to see what sort of devastating rumors ol’ Tom Dewey’s going to be spreading about Charterstone’s resident psychic advisor. “Hey guys, you know that 92-year-old woman living in the condo complex who I went to for psychic advice on my complex business dealings? Well it turns out she’s crazy! No, she’s crazy! No … what are you laughing at?”

Pluggers, 12/5/06

I’m going to pass quickly over the sub-Foxworthyism that is the joke in today’s Pluggers (“If your working mailbox sits inside your non-working mailbox, you might be a plugger”) to snicker snidely at the name of the Muncy, PA, resident who sent this in. Please, somebody tell me that this is a cruel joke perpetrated by central PA hipsters, or some kind of down-home country cultural reference of which I as a city-dwelling elite snot am ignorant, rather than somebody’s actual name. What I’m trying to say is, if you name your son “Chubby Fry,” you might be a plugger, and you’re definitely determined to make sure that he’s a plugger.

Zits and Dick Tracy, 12/5/06

I offer these two strips to showcase how the comics treats delivery personnel stumbling into wacky comics-style situations. For reasons too boring for me to go into here, the Tracys have had their minds erased for Dr. Froid’s sinister purposes and Jeremy is naked. Now, I’m not an expert on automatic-rifle-handling techniques, but I’m kind of dubious about the way that the Brinks man on the left is holding his weapon in panel two of Dick Tracy. I’m pretty sure that the only time I’ve ever seen anyone wielding a gun like that was when he was standing in the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of other guys on their way to seize the city’s central marketplace from a rival clan’s militia.

As for the clotheslessness dilemma, I have to say that I don’t think the thought of my girlfriend “accidentally” finding me naked in high school would have traumatized me as much as it apparently does Jeremy. I’m not saying anything good or non-scarring would have come of that had it actually happened, but I think I would have been more open to it before the fact.

Apartment 3-G, 12/5/06

You know, both Mary Worth and Apartment 3-G are heavily into supernaturally-themed storylines right now — just in time for six weeks late for Halloween! Personally, I think Lu Ann’s found her perfect man: dedicated, distant, and invisible. Mostly, the Amazing Tale Of The Mysterious Haunted Studio is reminding me how damn boring the Lu Ann plots are. I think I speak for us all when I say: bring on Margo and Eric’s wacky antics, which should play out like a methed-up version of The Lady Eve. Even glum Tommie’s stories have a mopey grandeur compared to this goofy twaffle.

Spider-Man, 12/5/06

Trust me, you do not want to know what just happened in that van.

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B.C. and Wizard of Id, 11/3/06

Here’s a true comics fact that I find endlessly fascinating: Johnny Hart, the deranged mastermind behind B.C., is also the writer (but not the artist) for the Wizard of Id. This is interesting because B.C. is, as frequently noted here by me and others, totally deranged these days, whereas the Wizard of Id is, if not breaking any new comedic ground, actually still kind of funny. Today’s strips, both on the topic of sweet, delicious, tempting, demonic booze, illustrate the point nicely. B.C. is pretty typical of the strip’s current loopy state: the weird verbiage, convoluted but not particularly funny, the setup that’s ultimately just one character telling a joke to another, and the punchline that’s dependent on a series of odd assumptions and that seems like it might, in a parallel universe, be funny, but in this one is not. Now, a lot of you cruel bastards have taken this to mean that Hart has just lost it. But take a look at this Wizard of Id, which is itself typical of the strip’s style: blunt, dry, to the point, and actually driven by some cursory knowledge of the strip’s characters. In other words, ol’ Johnny is fully capable of working within the constraints of what makes a comic strip funny and normal; but in B.C. he’s made a conscious decision to follow his own meandering muse. Which in some ways is all the more alarming.

Apartment 3-G, 11/3/06

Meanwhile, the Story of Lu Ann’s Magical Mysterious Attic has apparently been outsourced to a Brontë sister. I’ve been all in favor the new interweaving storylines in Apartment 3-G, but we need more of Tommie teasing married men with her awkward sexuality and Margo threatening people with bodily harm and less of Lu Ann’s maybe-supernatural loft space. Yesterday we were teased into believing that this pile of bedding was someone asleep on the bed; presumably tomorrow we’ll learn that there isn’t actually anybody in the next room, but that someone has accidentally left the radio on in there and it happens to be playing Li’l Jon’s latest hit, “Hello, Anyone There? (Feat. Ying Yang Twins).”

If Alan and Eric Mills and, hell, Margo are all conspiring to drive Lu Ann insane à la Gaslight, though, all will be forgiven and then some.

Dick Tracy, 11/3/06

If you haven’t been following Dick Tracy (and really, who could blame you if you haven’t?), Dick has acquired an experimental device that can read minds. This turns out to be much, much less interesting than it sounds, as so far he’s only used it to annoy his officemates. I just wanted to point out that one of his coworkers is apparently Lara Flynn Boyle, seriously slumming in some kind of Nehru-collared shirt.

Marvin, 11/3/06

Lord alive, I hope the dog eats that baby.

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So, today was the 75th anniversary of the beginning of Dick Tracy! Many of the strips distributed by the same syndicate offered their tributes today, which were for the most part significantly less wanktastic than Blondie’s endless anniversary hijinks. The awards for the two least seamless nods go to:

Gil Thorp, 10/4/06

Gil Thorp, which features a namecheck by a teenager who never reads the paper and wouldn’t read a 75-year-old comic strip if he did, and who was at most two years old when the most recent movie incarnation of the franchise came out; and…

Shoe, 10/4/06

Shoe, which features Detective Tracy’s severed head in a case behind Roz’s bar, with death’s grim rictus forcing him to feign amusement at this awful joke.

In non-Dick Tracy news:

Mary Worth, 10/4/06

Actually, it seems to me that in a single evening you corrected things quite nicely.

Seriously, I’m really beginning to believe that Mary and her crew are just going to talk themselves into a sense of guiltless satisfaction. If this is the beginning of the all-singing, all-dancing, all-sociopathic Mary Worth, then I’m going to just embrace it and run with it. I can’t wait to see what murderous crimes they’re going to escalate to next! “Yes, perhaps crucifying Mr. Jenkins in the Charterstone courtyard and leaving him to die over a period of days was a bit harsh, but he did tread on the flowerbed, and there is a sign warning against doing just that, so in a real sense, this is all his doing.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/4/06

Wow. So, it looks like June and Heather are on the verge of a full-on makeout session, with Rex watching from afar and thinking “ME LIKEY!” Could this strip get any more polymorpheously perverse — or divorced from its ostensible narrative content?

June seems pretty upset that Heather’s petty personal problems have ruined her vacation plans. I’m surprised Heather even bothers to bring up her mother’s feelings, which are clearly not as important as June’s, who had already picked out the kilt Rex was going to wear. All this clan stuff sounds promising to me, though; Heather’s English, if I remember right, so maybe we’ll get into some kind of Anglo-Scot hatred storyline that will baffle the vast majority of Americans for whom all “those people over there” are pretty much indistinguishable.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 10/4/06

YEAH, THAT’S JUST HOW IT IS! ‘CAUSE YOU STILL LOVE HER, BUT SHE LOATHES THE VERY SIGHT OF YOU! WHAT’RE YA GONNA DO? HAW HAW! Ah, whimsy.

UPDATE: So it turns out that “David Tarafa” is actually faithful reader and occasional commentor Lambnesiac, who is the first Curmudgeonite to be successfully TDIETed. And, uh, whose marriage is I’m sure much, much healthier than the Scadutotization would have you believe. Uh. Heh.