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Archive: Dick Tracy

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Monday is for grudging respect

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Slylock Fox, 10/31/22

The thing I absolutely love and respect about Slick Smitty is that every time we see him, Slylock and the animal cops have him absolutely dead to rights, yet he still has the shit-eating grin on his face that says that he doesn’t believe he’ll receive any consequences for his actions or simply doesn’t care about them if he does. That’s true even in circumstances like today’s, when he’s dressed in an extremely stupid costume in order to pull of an even stupider crime, and hooked up to one of those lie detector machines that the animals have advanced from the current level of “not a lie detector, just a detector of elevated heart rates and other physical activity” to “detects lies, but unable to understand low-level ‘truths’ and ‘falsehoods’ as part of a larger semantic context.”

Dick Tracy, 10/31/22

I’ve had my differences with Vitamin Flintheart in the past, but I respect his theater company’s total commitment to verisimilitude. They have access to an extremely lifelike robotic dog that can talk, and yet they’re still trying to find a trained real dog for the non-talking scenes! You don’t want the human actors to start worrying about getting replaced by robots, now do you.

Gasoline Alley, 10/31/22

Say what you will about Gasoline Alley, but as its name implies, it began as a strip about people talking about motor vehicles, so I have to respect the amount of panel space it’s dedicating to people going into great detail about the different kinds of garbage trucks in use today.

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Railfans? Comic strips? Time to plug my novel, The Enthusiast, available wherever books are sold!

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The Lockhorns, 10/29/22

“Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, ‘Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.’ Man bursts into tears. Says, ‘But doctor … I am Pagliacci.’ So he went on a killing spree. Upon reflection, doctor should’ve referred him to a qualified therapist who could have assessed him for clinical depression. Anyway. Made an opera out of it. Good opera.”

Marvin, 10/29/22

You know what would make pretty much all comics better? If, when the artist was stuck for an idea, they just came up with a flimsy excuse to do a sweet drawing of a train.

Dick Tracy, 10/29/22

Look, we’re all thinking it, so I’m gonna say it: The Dick Tracy creative team didn’t have to make Steelface’s eyes so darn dreamy. But they did, and I think most of us sincerely appreciate it.

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Live by the app, die by the app

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Gil Thorp, 10/21/22

Look, we all know that there’s supposed to be an apostrophe in “Yonkers,” and the joke is that Madame Yonker’s fever is up, meaning she’s sick, but wouldn’t it be funnier if that weren’t the case? “What’s up is Madame Yonkers Fever, the latest craze where we all take turns pretending to be ‘Madame Yonkers,’ a French teacher that we made up! C’mon, Gil, join in on the fun! It’s been in Time and Newsweek, and, I assume, on TikTok.”

Dick Tracy, 10/21/22

So Steelface is the guy whose nephew is doing Vitamin’s comics play, and his particular criminal gimmick is that he’s running some kind of auto theft ring, and, unrelated, has a metal face. Today’s strip is particularly evocative: despite working in the shadowy underworld, Steelface still speaks the language of modern capitalism, in which the vehicles at the heart of his operation are reduced to mere “units” that must be “processed,” and processed more efficiently to boot. Goodwin tries to play along, but he still sees each stolen car as a unique individual and dares to share his truth with his boss and let him know what makes each of them special.

Mary Worth, 10/21/22

Sure, dating a younger man seems cool: the sex is great, and they’re more likely to have made millions from their app startup than someone your age. But there are downsides: they’re much more prone to dying in an Instagram-related accident before your very eyes. Beware!