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Beetle Bailey, 3/31/22

Look, I have carefully curated my entire lifestyle so that I don’t have to know or care about the pop culture references or aesthetic sensibilities of anyone born after 2002. So it’s not entirely clear to me if the kids today are into ghastly backpacks that look like a nightmare version of human head with a zipped-up mouth, or if the brains behind Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC, who I assume have curated their lifestyles so that they don’t have to know or care about the pop culture references or aesthetic sensibilities of anyone born after 1964, just assume that this is a thing the kids today are into. Either way, I don’t care for it.

Dick Tracy, 3/31/22

Every time we’ve seen a performance from Vitamin’s new talent who parodies Tonsils, a cacophonic singer who almost killed Dick Tracy, he’s drawn with his arms like that. He’s not supposed to have six arms (you have to clarify these things with Dick Tracy, though if the did have six arms he’d be named something like “Sixarm” or “Armsix”), so I guess it’s supposed to represent a gesture of some sort, and this other lady is doing it too, now, so: fine, I’ll ask. What is it. What’s the gesture. Is it a jerk-off motion. Is “oh the rainbow turned muddy” some kind of code for masturbation that I’m unfamiliar with. I’m almost as grumpy as Dick is here.

Crankshaft, 3/31/22

Look, I don’t care if Crankshaft dies because he didn’t take his pills, or because he took too many of his pills. I just want him dead. It honestly doesn’t really even need to be pill related.

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Crankshaft, 3/21/22

Pam. Pam. Your father is an enthusiastic gardener who loves to order stuff from the Bean’s End catalog. That’s a giant bag labelled “Bean’s End Mulch.” Why on earth do you feel like you need to ask what that is? You know what it is! It’s a goddamn bag of mulch! Asking this question can only set up a terrible joke, or at minimum extend a conversation with Crankshaft. Do you want that? Do you think any of us want to watch that? C’mon!

Dick Tracy, 3/21/22

Never let it be said that Dick Tracy is a character without nuance! For instance, you’d think a tough guy cop would be irritated when his foppish theater pal wants him to take time out of his busy work day to come see a celebrity impersonator he plans to represent. But no, Dick’s fine with that. It’s only a problem when the new talent parodies a cacophonic singer who almost killed him! That’s the line you shouldn’t cross with him, no matter what.

Mary Worth, 3/21/22

Not sure why you would’ve ever doubted that Ian’s colleagues all dislike him, but today’s strip pretty much confirms that Ian’s colleagues all dislike him.

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Dick Tracy, 3/18/22

Coffyhead claimed that the coffee over at Bean Howz was “stale,” but I think the truth is that, like any addict, his need for coffee stimulation is only getting more intense over time. The stuff for normies that coffee shops sell has to meet the standards of the local health department, and that won’t cut it for him anymore. He’s got to go meet his street-corner “connection,” a guy who’s got a black-market espresso machine set up at Fletcher and Main that does things to a coffee bean that science cannot fully explain and definitely can’t recommend.

Crock, 3/18/22

For a long time, the go-to irritating but correct move when discussing the Cinematic Wollstonecraft-Shelleyverse has been to huffily reply “Actually Frankenstein was the doctor, you’re referring to Frankenstein’s monster” when anyone calls a shambling assembly of corpse parts reanimated by forbidden science “a Frankenstein.” But we’ve been doing this so long that it’s thoroughly played out. I’m urging my fellow pedants to move on to a new focus of correction: pointing out that the Bride, as iconically performed by Elsa Lanchester, was costumed and made up to be strange looking, but was not intended to be seen as “ugly” the way Boris Karloff was as the Monster, and was in fact quite striking and attractive. Therefore, jokes like the one in today’s Crock are based on a false premise. Please join me in this new movement!