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Hello everyone! I’m back and very grateful to Uncle Lumpy for his guest-blogging prowess … and extremely grateful for everyone who donated to the Comics Curmudgeon fundraiser! Individual thank-yous are, per usual, coming your way in the next week or so. And now, tanned, rested, and ready to take on … Dick Tracy? Sure, why not.

Dick Tracy, 9/14/20

Brenda Starr and Little Orphan Annie, two iconic long-running continuity strips, sadly came to an end in the last decade, but that hasn’t stopped Dick Tracy from still plugging along (because America likes violent cops more than it likes newspapers or orphans!) and gathering up its syndicate’s intellectual property into a Tribune Content Agency Cinematic Universe. Now Brenda is going to teach Annie and Dick’s half-alien granddaughter Honeymoon to write a journalistically rigorous feature article on … vampires? Sure, why not. I’m honestly surprised that the head of the University of Neo-Chicago’s Department of Ghouls and Draculas they’re interviewing isn’t named “Professor Stakes,” as that’s the sort of on-the-nose nomenclature this feature specializes in.

Crankshaft, 9/14/20

It’s a difficult environment out there for indie booksellers — especially when they have to compete against nice old ladies who operate unlicensed bookstores over their garage, flouting the ADA and any number of fire safety codes and just daring the city’s toothless permitting apparatus to shut them down.

The Lockhorns, 9/14/20

A lot about The Lockhorns, especially the fact that they spend most of their time in a semi-featureless void space, can be explained if you imagine that they’re kept captive in some kind of containment field, possibly floating in a sphere high above the earth, and the rest of the world watches a livestream of their dysfunctional antics for entertainment and/or as a cautionary example. In this alternate universe, journalists like Jake Tapper (?) comment on major milestones in their lives, and presumably everyone’s focus on them brings us together as a nation.

Mary Worth, 9/14/20

I was pretty dubious about Saul Helps A Tween Heal, but I am cautiously optimistic about Saul Woos A Giantess!

Funky Winkerbean, 9/14/20

Honey, just because you’re saying it louder doesn’t make it true

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Funky Winkerbean, 7/13/20

Hey, remember how this is the second attempt to make a movie out of Lisa’s Story, and the first one actually got to the point where filming had started and everything, and Les somehow managed to both derail the production and get paid for doing so? And the only reason Mason managed to talk Les into signing off on another go-round was to promise to do it the “right way“? Well, now we know what “the right way” means, because unlike last time, Mason’s production has bothered to fit the actress playing Lisa with a Lisa-like wig, and it has utterly blown Les’s mind. I certainly hope he goes into a complete meltdown like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, becomes convinced that Marianne is Lisa, and begs her to come home with him, leading him to be ejected from the set, and, ultimately, committed to a mental hospital. The ensuing publicity makes Lisa’s Story an unexpected hit as everyone wants to see the movie that drove its own screenwriter mad, and Mason dedicates his Best Actor Oscar to Les, but he’s not allowed to watch the ceremony.

Gil Thorp, 7/13/20

You know what used to be a tradition around here is that Gil Thorp would do a completely bonkers summer storyline, but in recent years instead there’s just been boring bullshit about golf, so I certainly hope Gil is going to “shake things up” by ditching this new, dumb tradition in favor of the older, better one.

Dick Tracy, 7/13/20

Oh, he doesn’t have two heads? He’s just a guy whose shtick is that he likes ice cream cones, and his name is Coney? BOOOOOOOOO

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Gil Thorp, 7/11/20

Well folks, it looks like all’s well that end’s well, Mike “The Mayor”-wise! Sure, he had to endure half a semester at an “alternative” school for bad kids due to a draconian zero tolerance policy, but the important thing is that he used the opportunity to demonstrate leadership, responsibility, and perseverance, and also that he had a well-respected adult who works at a non-alternative school to write a letter of recommendation for him. Speaking of things and people that got used, what do you suppose is going to happen to all the bad kid pals Mike made and roped into his little baseball game? Probably menial jobs and/or prison, right?

Dick Tracy, 7/11/20

Neo-Dick Tracy hasn’t been quite as committed to physically freakish villains as past iterations of the strip have been, but I’m just going to say this now: the guy who just bought that ice cream cone better have two heads, or at least two faces.