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Hi and Lois, 7/12/19

Cheer up, Chip! You may not be part of the lucrative stable of intellectual property held by the Walt Disney Company, but Hearst Communications, the parent of King Features, is no slouch! In a tough media landscape, Hearst remains profitable and in fact its revenue grew in 2018. Of course, a closer look a the numbers reveals that nearly 40 percent of 2019’s profits will come from “business and medical data and software operations,” which might mean that the whole comics division is going to be spun off and sold to a private equity fund so Hearst can focus on its core competencies. That’s when you really need to start worrying, buddy! In the meantime, enjoy being subsidized by the aviation-safety data company that’s under the same corporate umbrella as you for whatever reason!

Dick Tracy, 7/12/19

Ha, nice try, Dick, but you don’t get to be a billionaire war profiteer without knowing a thing or two about how to deal with nosy cops, and one thing you know is that you definitely don’t answer casual questions about how it sure looks like you killed your wife without, like, a team of lawyers present.

Six Chix, 7/12/19

I’m not going to lie, y’all: I’m kind of in awe of the extremely bleak turn this joke takes very, very quickly.

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Dick Tracy, 6/27/19

Hey, remember last summer when Sawtooth took in a midnight showing of Rocky Horror in order to bite a guy to death and Sam Catchem happened to be there? I guess Rocky Horror is one of Dick Tracy’s “things” now and you know what Dick Tracy does with its “things”: gives a villain a really on-the-nose name related to them and a corresponding facial deformity. Looking forward to seeing how Tony Rocky Horror’s skull shape somehow coveys the concept of unintentional camp!

Gil Thorp, 6/27/19

OH MY GOD I immediately take back everything bad I said about Gil Thorp yesterday because today we learn that this summer’s real Beloved Character From The Past is in fact Hadley V. Baxendale! Hadley was the star of the very first Gil Thorp storyline covered on this site, which involved her and her boyfriend and fellow feminist agitator Steve Luhm fighting for full-sized lockers and equal cheer squad support for the girls’ teams. I’ve always wondered what happened to her over the last fifteen years, and since she partnered up with a pro basketball player/intellectual while her ex became a teve dropped out of college and became a bitter janitor, I’d say she’s doing pretty well for herself!

My only complaint is that the comics colorists don’t know what to do with the front of her hair, which is supposed to be a Sontag-esque grey streak, which she’s had since high school. Also I’m not really sure what “you were” is supposed to mean in the final panel. Like, did Coach Thorp remember “Oh, Hadley’s like super political, she probably isn’t going to change her name after marriage, which I guess means … she’s going to change her name … before marriage? That’s how it works, right? I mean, she’s gotta change her name sometime.”

Shoe, 6/27/19

The thing I like best about this strip is that Skyler is sitting in this chair, inches away from the TV, his eyes heavy with ennui, just like we’ve seen his uncle again and again and again. It’s as if he’s daring the Perfesser to make some snide remark about millennials and their darn screens.

Marvin, 6/27/19

Remember when Vince Neil, at the height of his Mötley Crüe decadence, did an incredibly insincere anti-drug PSA? That’s pretty much the vibe I’m getting from today’s Marvin. “Kids, you might think from the usual jokes in this strip that sitting around in a diaperful of your own piss is fun. But what if I told you about, uh, butt mold? Pretty gross, huh?” [goes back to making jokes about how sitting around in a diaperful of your own piss is fun three times a week for the next six years]

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Gil Thorp, 6/26/19

Welp, the softball team failure to advance in the playoffs went, as predicted, largely unnoticed (especially on this blog, heyooo) and now we’re onto a summer storyline! For those of you too young to remember, summer in Gil Thorp used to be a time when anything could happen, when the strip was freed from the rhythms of the school athletics calendar and could explore truly zany scenarios (e.g., “Coach Kaz, Rock and Roll Bodyguard,” “The Day Marty Moon Got Grifted At Golf,” “Gil Wrestles A Man With Dementia, For Charity“). But lately we’ve just had to endure Gil half-assing it even more than usual as a golf coach, with only the occasional Beloved Character From The Past returning to liven things up. And this year we’re getting a second-order Beloved Character From The Past: Jaquan, a pro basketball player who improbably tagged along for a trip back to Milford two summers ago with his personal trainer, Mudlark alum Trey Davis, and whose mid-career ennui was cured with the suggestion that he get a master’s degree in history. And folks, I’m allowed to say this because I have a master’s degree in history: I assume he’s returned to town to have his awful revenge on everyone who allowed him to make such a terrible decision, because getting a master’s degree in history sucks and carries literally no advantages whatsoever.

Dick Tracy, 6/26/19

Dick Tracy just jettisoned its vaguely exciting tale of Little Orphan Annie being kidnapped mid-week and instead demands that we pay close attention to this scene: a faceless, cigar-smoking man surrounded by a cloud of flies sings a little tune about banana bread and admonishes a yokel for gawping at his late uncle’s vast library. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, it probably won’t come as a huge shock that I find this much more interesting than a little light orphan-napping.

Dennis the Menace, 6/26/19

So Dennis is just straight up stealing stuff now? Even I have to admit that that’s reasonably menacing.