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Dick Tracy, 6/4/19

Well, it turns out the reason Little Orphan Annie is returning to Dick Tracy is because Daddy Warbucks’s second wife gave some testimony in a criminal case years ago, but the cops lost it (?) and now they need to talk to her again, but she’s disappeared and Daddy Warbucks doesn’t want to talk about her! Today we learn that this is probably because … he murdered her? On a boat? And yeah, the authorities should have investigated, but really, “rich, politically connected guy kills his wife in international waters” just isn’t a high-reward prosecution, honestly, which is why we’re only bringing it up now that we have a gangster with a facial deformity and corresponding nickname we need to put away.

Crankshaft, 6/4/19

If you ever need evidence that the Funkyverse is where joy goes to die, you could just present panel one of today’s Crankshaft, in which Pam and Jeff brace themselves for what seems like it’s going to be a happy announcement from their son and his girlfriend in their own particular way, which for Pam is “staring wide-eyed in absolute panic” and for Jeff is “crossing arms defiantly and glowering with contempt.”

Funky Winkerbean, 6/4/19

Of course, if that’s too subtle, you could also just point out today’s Funky Winkerbean, in which a little boy threatens to vomit on his grandmother.

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Dick Tracy, 5/18/19

It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the new storyline of Dick Tracy once again involves dipping back into the comics nostalgia well, with Little Orphan Annie being dragged back from comics purgatory to dance for our throwback amusement. Why not Brenda Starr, another dormant property who is owned, like Annie and Dick Tracy, by Tribune Content Agency, and who’s also a reporter, which would let us get into all sorts of First Amendment issues with the not-real-into-civil-liberties police force of Neo-Chicago? But, no, I guess we’re gonna see Little Orphan Annie trying to integrate her way into Honeymoon’s social circle, hanging out with notorious crime family relative “Ugly” Crystal and … Kandikane Lane, who is, I have always assumed, an adult? And old enough that it’s just “off-putting” and not “creepy and legally actionable” that she’s partners with a man old enough to be an old-timey movie star? Anyway, more on all this as developments warrant, which will hopefully be never.

Family Circus, 5/18/19

Note that Billy here is in fact the guy with the ball. There can be only one explanation of why he’s still alive: Billy killed all those other kids as they tried to kill him. Billy is a smiling, triumphant murderer, walking back into his home with blood on his hands but no guilt in his heart.

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Dick Tracy, 5/11/19

Oh hey, turns out I got bored with Dick Tracy’ Minit Mystery when it suddenly became be less about municipal politics and more about a leftist radical cop killer for hire (?) who killed a lady cop and that led to the local police apparatus violently cracking down on all local organized crime in civil rights violating ways, but now it turns out that, oops, the real cop killer was the lady cop’s husband! “Oops,” says Dick, “I was so obsessed with gangsters that I forgot that 55 percent of women in the U.S. are killed by intimate partners, which you’d think would be a stat at the top of your mind if you’re a person who solves murders for a living. Anyway, sorry about all the organized crime prosecutions we screwed up, by arresting a bunch of gangsters without warrants for no good reason.”

Gil Thorp, 5/11/19

Oh, hey, turns out that once the softball team got super into having interests outside of school, everyone wanted to get in on the “having outside interests” action, which they dubbed as “being too cool for school,” for some reason. Anyway, today’s the day when this relatively harmless trend pivots to becoming the ideological core of a revolutionary vanguard party!

Mark Trail, 5/11/19

Oh, hey, turns out that buzzing sound in Mark Trail was, as I predicted, bees. Bees, everyone! Ha ha, Mark is running away from a bunch of bees!