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Dick Tracy, 12/4/22

Look, here’s a tough message to all you “social justice warriors” out there: if you would simply allow police to do their jobs by hounding suspects to their ironic deaths, and if juries on the trials for those few cases where someone survives to go to court would just “serve cheerfully and use [their] best judgement” (i.e., convict in all cases) as the Crimestoppers Textbook suggests, then we could all live in a utopian paradise like Neo-Chicago, where selling counterfeit animation cels to furries is a crime considered major enough to attract the Major Crime Unit’s attention.

Gasoline Alley, 12/4/22

America’s population, and its newspaper comics reading population in particular, is rapidly aging, and many yearn for simple pleasures, like having a live-in domestic servant with whom they can share a laugh over alliteration in news articles. Sadly, thanks to out-of-control inflation in servant wages, most cannot afford that luxury, and must be satisfied with its depiction in Gasoline Alley, the old person’s comic of choice for extremely low-stakes chuckles.

Mary Worth, 12/4/22

OK, Iris, I know you’re very fixated on the physical similarities between you and Nan, but I think you do need to spend some time emotionally dealing with “yummy yummy yummy… for my tummy tummy tummy!” If you don’t nip this in the bud now, it absolutely will be part of your wedding vows.

Beetle Bailey, 12/4/22

Love the fact that, in his addled ramble around the house, General Halftrack managed to acquire a healthy pour of brown liquor. My man’s getting up there in years, but he’s still got it! (The “it” is of course a debilitating alcohol problem.)

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Beetle Bailey, 11/29/22

Beetle Bailey has recently established that, in addition to being extremely stupid, Zero is also an extremely accurate rifleman. But how can the U.S. military harden this peaceful simpleton’s heart so that he can use his skills to kill America’s adversaries? Well, it turns out that Sgt. Snorkel is actually pretty good at the “teach your soldiers to dehumanize the enemy” part of the job.

Crankshaft, 11/29/22

One of my least favorite Crankshaft tropes is when the gang treats Lena, a coworker who is always depicted as nothing but delightful as a person, with wholly undeserved contempt, especially when it comes to her cooking and/or making coffee. Like, fine, she’s probably bad at it or whatever, but their reactions are always way over the top in a way that I guess is supposed to be “exaggerated for comic effect” but always comes across as mean-spirited and unpleasant. Today’s strip, in which Ed declares that Lena’s cookies actively interfere with the Christ child’s mission to redeem mankind from sin, is a good example.

Dick Tracy, 11/29/22

Say, remember back in 2017, a more innocent time, when we all learned that Dick Tracy knows what cosplay is? Well, this is the year when we learn that Dick Tracy knows what furries are. Maybe he’s going to shoot one, or shoot somebody who’s robbing one, who knows!

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/23/22

Oh my God, Mr. Davidson the janitor is some kind of near-immortal being, charged with subtly guiding the world under his care, just like the characters in the MCU movie Eternals (maybe? like all normal people, I did not see that movie or read the comics it was based on). Anyway, it turns out that despite his apparent old age, in the context of his own kind he’s just a beginner, which explains why the Funkyverse is so deeply fucked up.

Dick Tracy, 11/23/22

I guess the glory days of Dick Tracy really are behind us: instead of having his skull exploded by powerful magnets, Steelface just got mildly burned and then left the hospital in a huff over the substandard medical care they provided, and instead of being shot in the back for “resisting arrest” by Dick and his goons, he’s just going to learn through irony that stealing cars isn’t very nice, and so he’ll wind his stolen car ring up post-haste and move on to more socially productive pursuits.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/23/22

Oh wow, look at how mad Truck is! He’s beginning to suspect that Mud Mountain’s whole binge eating/onstage pants-shitting bit was just a ruse that successfully promoted him from opening act to headliner! This is why you never found stardom, Truck: you have to be willing to endure any humiliation, public or private, if it advances your career. You never had what it takes and you never will.

Pluggers, 11/23/22

A fun fact is that on more than one occasion I’ve started to take a shower and realized I still had my hearing aids on, which is a much more terrifying situation vis-a-vis replacement costs than the one in which this plugger finds himself. But it turns out they’re pretty hardy gadgets and they came through OK! Anyway, I have out-pluggered a Pluggers and now I need to go take a long shower (without my glasses or hearing aids on) to cry.