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Dick Tracy, 10/19/19

Earlier this month I went to that deciding Dodgers-Nationals playoff game where the home team’s seemingly comfortable lead melted away late in the game and turned into a rout, and there were definitely folks who started trooping out when things started going against the boys in blue even though there was still hope they could turn things around. And yeah, they all probably had much longer trips home than we did and wanted to beat traffic, but I’m a bitter-ender by nature, and always feel a certain frisson of contempt for people who go through the trouble and expense of seeing a live event but then don’t stay for the whole thing. Does that mean I endorse incapacitating, or possibly murdering, someone with a quick hypodermic to the neck if they want to get up and leave a performance of Our Town when the Stage Manager’s closing soliloquy has just begun? Well, not exactly, but I do understand why you might feel the urge to do it to them.

Gil Thorp, 10/19/19

It took me a while to figure out, but Chet, who’s determined to win his stepson’s love and/or respect by interfering in his high school athletics career, is the same Chet on the school board who Hadley V. Baxendale threatened to personally sue if he tried to stop a kid she knew from illegally attending school in a district where he didn’t live. This explains a lot about his motivation at this pivotal moment in the current storyline. He’s already had it rubbed in his face that rules and “doing the right thing” don’t matter, and the only way to get ahead in life is to have a powerful patron. Now he has the opportunity to use his own position of power to clear the way for a family member, and by god he’s going to take it.

Family Circus, 10/19/19

I’m an only child of parents who separated before I was three, and while I’m not going to deny it caused some emotional bumps in the road for me growing up, it also wasn’t without certain advantages for a boy who did not and still does not particularly like sharing things or space with other people. So yeah, I relate to Gary here, whose smug little smile seems to be telling us that “Pretty much all I have to say is ‘well, at dad’s house I get to do this’ and suddenly I get to do that at mom’s house too. Oh, you have to share this cramped little place with two adults and three other kids? How quaint, for you.”

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Dick Tracy, 10/15/19

It was all fun and games reading up on the hilarious backstory of Detective Frisk and Sal Monella, but the current storyline has turned out to be kind of enh, mostly involving Frisk tracking down Lily, her birth mother, who turns out to have sold Frisk as a baby as part of some kind of baby-selling ring she’s still connected to that Frisk is investigating, and now she’s pretending to emotionally bond with Frisk so that the ring can … catch up with Frisk, I think? Or something. Anyway, today is notable because said baby-selling bio-mom proves that she’s truly beyond the pale morally by openly lusting after Vitamin Flintheart, who’s a weird gross old man and also already spoken for. Control yourself, Lily! You should go see a production of Our Town to appreciate its metatheatrical commentary on ordinary lives, not to get horny!

Mary Worth, 10/15/19

Speaking of not getting horny, Wilbur and Estelle are strengthening their bond by belting out Sandy Denny’s 1973 folk-rock classic, “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” Meanwhile, Iris has been feeling exhausted, possibly because her hot young stud boyfriend’s sexual endurance is outpacing hers. “Maybe you should cut back on your class schedule?” Zak suggests. “And focus your energy on the important stuff? Like sex with me?”

Marvin, 10/15/19

Meanwhile, over in Marvin, Marvin’s grandpa yearns to join his wife in the grave, and honestly: if the alternative is hanging around alive with the rest of his family, who can blame him?

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Dick Tracy, 10/13/19

Good on Dick Tracy for raising awareness about this strange cancer cluster, but, uh, it’s weird that this epidemiological problem is being treated as a crime that Dick and the MCU can crack if they just get the right clue or lead from a concerned citizen! I guess if this leads to Dick gunning down the CEO of a polluting chemical company whose head is shaped like a benzene molecule, I can’t complain.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/13/19

Not sure which wizened fortune-telling crone I managed to annoy enough that now I’m cursed to be the guy who has to report on it when a syndicated newspaper comic, formerly the most family-friendly form of mass-produced entertainment out there, does a joke about piss stuff, but anyway, here’s a Mother Goose and Grimm where there’s just, like, a big puddle of yellow piss, right where God and everyone can see it, and I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, it’s dog piss, that’s not so bad,” but I dunno, man, the dog can talk. He can talk, you know? I think if you know how to talk you should be able to piss in a toilet. Just my take.