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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/9/21

Aw, man, I guess when Sarah said she was thinking of ensuring that her father stopped being a doctor, she just meant she was going to use the power of her imagination to pull that off, which: snoooooze. I guess it could be mildly interesting to see Rex be sullen and dickish in a time and place where you’re much more likely to get shot for having a bad attitude, but honestly I’m worried this Old West sojourn is going to be find itself focusing on Buckley, husband to the local shopkeep and friend to all the “roots” cowboy musicians passing through town.

Dick Tracy, 3/9/21

Dick Tracy is a comic that features a rotating cast of freakishly malformed villains and a main character whose granddaughter is literally half moon alien, but by far the most unrealistic thing that’s ever happened in it is a cop having a legit reason to enter a house without a warrant and being disappointed to find a bunch of drug paraphernalia.

Gasoline Alley, 3/9/21

Gasoline Alley is the only strip with the nerve to have a main character turn to the audience and say “It sure looks like those two guest characters are about to have an interesting storyline, doesn’t it? Well, we won’t be paying attention to them anymore.”

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Dick Tracy, 2/24/21

A little sniff before she fixes dinner, if you follow her. If you get her drift. Her snow drift. She’s talking about cocaine! I feel like what with all the weird escapades with “Pouch” and his stolen balloon “Blue” that this strip has been going on for the past several weeks, we’ve lost sight of the true star of this storyline: cocaine, and the recreational consumption and illegal distribution thereof.

Blondie, 2/24/21

Look, obviously the Blondie strips where she’s taking notes on the “[Insert Profession/Hobbyist Group To Make Jokes About Here] Group Luncheon” are just excuses to make some easy jokes riffing on widely accepted stereotypes about the profession or hobbyist group in question, and that’s a perfectly valid joke template for a long-running legacy strip like Blondie to have. I’m just saying, though, you really should have your stereotypes correct if you’re going down this road. Like, when I see someone with a sweater tied around their neck like this, I think “leader of the rich kid camp across the lake about to challenge our protagonists to a snobs vs. slobs battle in an ’80s comedy,” not “theater kid.”

Dustin, 2/24/21

I get that this is supposed to be a joke where an adult tells a child about how things used to be, but: Dustin is canonically supposed to be boomerang kid who came home from college and never left, and his younger sister is still in high school, so I don’t think we’re supposed to think of him as much past his mid 20s, meaning he was born in the mid-to-late ’90s; meanwhile, Facebook opened to the general public in 2006 and surpassed MySpace as the most heavily used social networking site in 2008, so “likes” have been a social currency for basically his entire life. On the other hand, Hayden, age seven, probably doesn’t use social media at all and when he starts it will be on some app whose feedback mechanisms are entirely strange and foreign to the rest of us. What I’m trying to say is, if you’re doing an entire strip about generation gaps, you at least need to know what various generations are into.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/24/21

“I think I basically get the urge to have a place where you sleep indoors and spend time when you’re not at work. But why would you want that place to be nice?”

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Dick Tracy, 2/18/21

I just kind of assumed that, as a high-ranking detective in the Major Crimes Unit, Dick Tracy was, if not living on easy street, then at least financially comfortable. But today we learn that he’s so short of cash that he’s been reduced to using leftover Chinese food for gambling purposes, and thinks a single dollar bill represents “pay dirt.” Truly sad that those snitches in Internal Affairs say you’re not allowed to put stuff from the evidence locker up for auction on the dark web anymore!

Six Chix, 2/18/21

I … guess this is a riff on the “I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast” bit in the beloved 1996 Adam Sandler film Happy Gilmore? Except that cats really do eat fish, and it isn’t gross at all or embarrassing for the cat say that? I suppose if Six Chix were going to do a strip where the entire joke was substituting the word “fish” for the word “shit” because they sound vaguely alike, they could’ve made it a lot more disgusting than this, so let’s count our blessings.

Dennis the Menace, 2/18/21

Dennis has a plan for rising sea levels in the wake of melting ice caps, everyone: he’s gonna climb this tree! It’s not a plan with a lot of thought towards next steps or long term consequences, but it is a plan nevertheless.