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Archive: Dick Tracy

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Forward movement

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Mary Worth, 4/12/21

Finally, finally, we are blessedly moving on from Saul and Eve’s emotional process and starting a new storyline in Mary Worth, and hell yeah it involves Dr. Drew Corey, the son Mary’s semi-boyfriend Dr. Jeff Corey! You may best remember Dr. Drew from that time Dawn decided to romance him, and he was receptive but also happened to be dating another lady at the same time, which earned him a thorough slapping that haunted him literally for years. He seemed like he had learned some valuable lessons from that episode and we haven’t heard much from him since, so it’s exciting to learn that he’s still kind of a dick. “Every day brings an interesting mix of ills! Get it, dad? Because they all have some terrible disease, poor bastards. Good thing Dr. Drew is here to help them! Or not, whatever, I get paid either way, it turns out.”

Dick Tracy, 4/12/21

Speaking of new storylines, we’re finally done with Dick Tracy’s hippie nonsense and have moved onto a new storyline here as well, which seems to involve a prisoner who, based on her pallor and catchy nickname, is clearly deceased. I guess it’s no surprise that in the carceral Neo-Chicago police state, not even death can keep you out of the clutches of the punitive justice system.

Crankshaft, 4/12/21

Wow, after some vaguely pandemic-presaging strips a few weeks ago, it looks like Crankshaft is going to leapfrog over the last year-plus of our lives entirely and just skip to “gosh, remember the pandemic, that was crazy,” huh? I’m of two minds about this: it could’ve really brightened my 2020 if I had been constantly wondering who in Crankshaft’s friend group of terrible old people was going to die of COVID, though I ultimately would’ve been bitterly disappointed when the answer turned out to be “none of them.”

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Oh, there’s an actual joke in Dennis the Menace today? Hadn’t noticed

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Dennis the Menace, 4/8/21

I’ve always thought Dennis’s affinity for Westerns, a genre very popular among children when this strip began and almost unknown to children today, says a lot about the suffocating layer of nostalgia piled atop this strip. However, today we get an intriguing hint that Dennis is actually watching revisionist neo-Westerns that try to grapple with the real social and historical backgrounds behind the myths, and whose heroes, turning to liquor in a futile attempt to numb the loneliness of the open range and the trauma of living in a violent frontier society, end up suffering from alcohol-induced psychosis — or, in cowboy patois, “scotch terrors.”

Blondie, 4/8/21

If DithersCo employs a full-time vending machine stocker rather than just hiring a service that stocks the machines for multiple businesses in the area like everyone else does, maybe Mr. Dithers ought to spend less time micromanaging Dagwood while he’s at work and more time thinking about some of their structural staffing costs. On the other hand, this arrangment may have arisen because there’s a single employee who’s responsible for the company’s unusually intense vending machine use, and replacing him with someone of similar talents but a lesser appetite will produce some real benefits for DithersCo’s bottom line.

Dick Tracy, 4/8/21

Say what you will about Dick Tracy, but if you want to see a guy in a suit stabbing a hippie in major newspapers, this comic strip is your only option.

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Please do not involve your caterer in your kink, if that’s what this is

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Blondie, 3/26/21

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but every once in a while a character pops up in Blondie who, even though they’re clearly drawn in the prevailing Blondie house style, gives off the vibe of being a caricature of a real person rather than a character made up out of whole cloth. I always assume this is done as a favor for a friend — or, in cases like today, when the dude in question is giving a knowing glance to the reader that says “eh? eh? I fell out of love with my fiance during the pandemic and no longer wish to marry her? eh?”, a personal attack on a nemesis.

Dick Tracy, 3/26/21

I’m continuing to refuse to try to understand the plot of the current Dick Tracy storyline and am just going along with its ~vibes~, and honestly having a pretty good time with it! I particularly like the final panel today, with a grim-faced Tiger Lilly shoving a crude drawing of a peace sign at a cop. “This is the commune’s cryptic symbol,” he’s saying. “Figure out what it means and you’ll be able to crack this thing wide open.”

Family Circus, 3/26/21

Billy looks pretty embarrassed, as well he should. If you’re putting on pants the normal way and can’t win a pants-putting-on-race against a kid who squirmed around until he somehow crammed both his feet through one pant leg while wearing shoes, you are not very good at putting on pants.