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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.

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Mary Worth, 9/4/06

Let’s get my assessment of this out of the way right now: Lame. LAME. LAAAAAME. This is just typical of the touchy-feely logic of this strip’s southern California locale: they think they can talk Stalky McStalker out of his stalking ways. Well, some mustachioed monsters can’t be reasoned with, you liberal namby-pambies.

We can’t see Dr. Chinbeard’s hands in panel one, so there’s still an off chance that he’s holding on to a pillowcase full of doorknobs and is about to start wailing away at Aldo’s face and chest. I like the fact that Wilbur is standing there with his arms crossed, like he thinks it makes him look like a bad-ass. Nobody wearing that shirt looks like a badass, Wilbur.

Gil Thorp, 9/4/06

Gil Thorp, meanwhile, is the diametric opposite of lame, as unlame as a comic strip can possibly be. Clearly Sean Pettibone has stumbled upon some sort of avant-garde band from the 1980s attempting to refresh their cutting-edge creative efforts by working up a new chainsaw-based act out in the deep woods, which they’ll record for their new album, Clearcut Symphony. Either that or they’re chainsaw-handed cyborgs, sent back from the future to prevent Milford from winning the football championship this year. Either way: distinctly non-lame. The retro Moose Miller t-shirt is just icing on the cake.

Dick Tracy, 9/4/06

It’s always kind of hard to follow the jumbled Dick Tracy chronology, but I’m reasonably sure that Dick is either engaging in pre-sex tie removing or post-sex tie retying in panel three.

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Mary Worth, 8/18/06

The scariest thing about this strip is that, in panel two, Mary’s eyes actually do sort of seem to be saying … well, if not “Yes,” then at least “Maybe.” As in, “Maybe I should give this guy a chance. Jeff’s away, and I never really promised him anything … and Aldo really does seem like he’d be quite the devoted type … not always running off to crazy Oriental countries on barely a day’s notice … and it has been a while since I’ve had a good mustache ride…”

Uh. I’m stopping this rumination right here, in the name of all that is decent. Let us never speak of this again.

Mark Trail, 8/18/06

Well, this is certainly a disturbing surprise. I have to say that if you had asked me two weeks ago, “What Mark Trail character will cause a truck to fly off a cliff because she was trying to put her tongue in someone else’s mouth?” I would have had to have said Kelly. After the car wreck, I’m sure Molly will stare mournfully at the mortally wounded Buck for a few minutes before she starts eating him.

B.C., 8/18/06

No, you’ve got it backwards: Wal-Mart will be leveling this vista in order to build four new Wal-Marts.

Dick Tracy, 8/18/06

Blasted Al Kinda! He’s already violated the laws of the United States and human decency; now, even in death, he’s managed to violate the laws of physics. Seriously, I’d love for someone to explain to me how he ended up under that flag.

For Better Or For Worse, 8/18/06

Everyone who thinks that April is going to be experiencing “nature’s most amazing miracle” the hard way before she turns 18, raise your hand.