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Dick Tracy, 1/18/22

Oh, look, everybody, it’s another quick Dick Tracy Minit Mystery, starring [steadfastly refuses to do any actual research on the relative popularity of Dick Tracy villains] everybody’s favorite villain, Piston Puss! According to the invaluable Dick Tracy wiki, Piston Puss has appeared in exactly one other storyline, in 1966, which means that the Giant Wheel Of Obscure Old Dick Tracy Characters the creative team spins every time they need a new antagonist must be even bigger than I thought. Anyway, clearly this mystery is going to somehow hinge on the order in which the various suspects hung their coats on that rack, so it’s too bad that Piston Puss’s wiki entry doesn’t say whether or not he’s partial to fur coats. Meanwhile, I have some notes on his character design and overall execution: if his name is Piston Puss, shouldn’t his face be a piston? Putting some half-assed metal disks over his ears does not make his face a piston, I regret to inform you. Also, call me bigoted if you must, but I would not hire a part-car, part-man person to work at a car dealership, because I would worry that he would try to eat the cars, or perhaps make love to them.

Mary Worth, 1/18/22

Haha, welp, looks like Wilbur’s not only still alive, but he didn’t even lose his glasses or his belt! We’re not even going to get the pleasure of watching him stumbling around this desert island, unable to see anything and desperately trying to keep his pants from falling down! Don’t think we’ll be satisfied by his comically ruffled combover! We Mary Worth readers aren’t mere goldfish, content to gobble up whatever flakes you drop down on us! IF WILBUR ISN’T DEAD, HE MUST AT LEAST SUFFER

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Dick Tracy, 1/14/22

When Apple rolled out the Apple Watch in 2015, probably a lot of comics nerds out there were like “Oh, a watch computer that helps you make phone calls? Just like the wrist wizards from Dick Tracy?” But there are important differences! For instance, thanks to Apple’s legendary quality standards, Apple Watches very rarely overhead and explode, and when they do, they definitely don’t instantly consume the wearer in a vortex of flame, as appears to have happened here.

In other news, if Dick Tracy is contemplating a return to its storied tradition of killing off its villains in cartoonishly horrific ways, I for one am interested, very interested! I’m also interested in hearing Dick tell the paramedics that “I told him to stand still, but he insisted on screaming and writhing around in agony, like a coward.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/14/22

Ha ha, yes, Sarah’s going to crack like an egg when they put her on the stand! I certainly hope that Rene manages to secure the services of his erstwhile mob family’s slick attorney, who will run rings around the Morgans’ bargain basement lawyer.

Mary Worth, 1/14/22

“A Code Oscar is what we call it when a gross, obnoxious slob falls off the boat to his death! If an uptight, prissy neat freak does it, that’s a Code Felix.”

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Slylock Fox, 1/10/22

This is at least the third time this mystery has appeared in Slylock Fox: it showed up in 2013, with exactly the same art albeit with different coloring, and had previously appeared in 2011, with different art but the same basic mystery and solution. My earlier commentary on those strips in both cases was predicated on the same scenario: that Shady Shrew had enslaved sapient silkworms and was forcing them to manufacture clothes from which he profited. But I must be mellowing in my old age, because my first thought today on reading the strip was “But wait! What if Shady has actually developed a new plant-based silk substitute, liberating his fellow animals from toil? Did you put that possibility into your ratiocination calculus, Slylock? Of course not, but Shady doesn’t need your approval! Society will hail him as a hero, at least until the plants become sapient too.”

Dick Tracy, 1/10/22

Not much to say specifically here, I just think this is a pretty good Dick Tracy fight panel, with the moody shadows and the KRAKing and BLAMing and such! I don’t really expect either of the participants to die in some baroquely violent way like in the good old days, but I won’t pretend I don’t enjoy this!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/10/22

You ever get a bunch of annoying car warranty scam calls and think of a great joke for your hillbilly-themed comic strip, then remember that your hillbilly characters don’t actually have access to phones, but you don’t feel like coming up with a new joke so you just kind of work around it? Because if you did, the result would look a lot like today’s Snuffy Smith. Also, does Snuffy think that mules live forever? If so, he’s in for an extremely rude surprise, possibly soon.