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Dick Tracy, 3/11/24

OK, fine, after my uninformed joking yesterday, I am back to reading the comics so you don’t have to and can inform you that (a) these strips are a flashback and (b) these two “dumb housecleaners” are actually retired FBI agents/Little Orphan Annie’s biological parents (you can tell by the lack of pupils, I guess?), who are somehow involved in thwarting the attempt to kidnap Oliver Warbacks. This is exactly what I don’t like about these kinds of retcons, honestly: now we have to believe that Warbucks and Annie were somehow tied together before she was even born — that’s her in utero there in panel two and three — when there was already a perfectly good origin story to their relationship (Warbucks bought her from a crooked orphanage to burnish his public image so he could keep selling defective artillery shells to that commie FDR).

Judge Parker, 3/11/24

Judge Parker artist Mike Manley is having health issues, and I have no insider information beyond that, but even though his name is on the strip a series of guest artists have filled in for him intermittently over the past few months. Today is the first showing from Gil Thorp’s Rod Whigham — I recognize those meaty hands and shocked eyelines anywhere. (This feels a bit like an echo of when then-Apartment 3-G artist Frank Bolle briefly filled in on Gil Thorp back in 2008.) Get well soon, Mike, but until then Rod’s going to be guiding us through a storyline where I assume the Spencer-Driver clan puts aside their differences and closes ranks to prevent Ann, last seen having a heated argument with this guy, from going away for murder.

Family Circus, 3/11/24

Aw, look how happy Jeffy looks here! He’s very sure he was born a whole person and isn’t an eldritch abomination assembeled out of various parts, and we should let him continue to hold that impression, even though it isn’t true.

Slylock Fox, 3/11/24

Look, the newspaper comics need all the help they can get, so its actually totally fine when Slylock Fox decides to cash in on all that SLICK SMITTY NUDE SLICK SMITTY GETTING OUT OF SHOWER SLICK SMITY DRIPPING WET search traffic.

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Dustin, 3/10/24

Hey kids, let Grandpa Josh tell you about the Do-Not-Call List! Starting in the mid ’00s in the United States, you could put your phone number on a list and it became simply illegal for telemarketers to call you! It wasn’t a perfect system — political fundraisers successfully sued to be exempted for First Amendment reasons, for instance — but it immediately eliminated a huge percentage of unwanted phone calls, and, combined with increasingly widespread caller ID features, made using the phone a much more pleasant experience. Unfortunately, this paradise only lasted a few years, and by the ’10s people figured out that they could bypass the list, using voice-over-internet technology to make phone calls ostensibly “from” U.S. numbers even though they could originate anywhere in the world. Since these calls are all illegal, there are no legit telemarketers anymore, so people’s phones are bombarded by scam after scam. Old people who remember a world where phone calls were a useful form of communication still answer and get bamboozled, while younger people who grew up with other ways to connect find the scams yet another reason to think of talking on the phone as a repellent act and are wont to simply never answer a phone call.

Anyway, my point is that Dustin is a product of the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and while usually you can tell because its central conceit is based on a world of high youth unemployment that simply no longer exists, there are other clues that all of its action takes place 15 years ago, such as an ostensible early twentysomething knowing what a “Do-Not-Call List” is.

Dick Tracy, 3/10/24

I will admit that I have not been following this Dick Tracy/Little Orphan Annie crossover very closely, so I don’t remember if Dick has already interacted with these two undercover kidnappers, but it would be very funny if he hasn’t. “As far as he’s concerned, we’re just the dumb housekeepers!” [Later, Dick sees them for the first time] “Warbucks, don’t worry about these two people waving guns at us. They’re just the dumb housekeepers! Which you can tell by, uh, just look at them. It’s fine. They’re probably using the guns for cleaning purposes.”

Hi and Lois, 3/10/24

I gotta say, if you asked me to come up with the meanest possible parody answer to the question of “What would a legacy newspaper cartoonist say was their favorite part of Daylight Savings Time,” it would 100% absolutely be “Hooray, an extra hour for more golf!”

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Dustin, 3/3/24

Much as I enjoy Dustin’s “Ooh, a text” betraying his desperate need for even the most tenuous human contact, I have to call foul on this strip. It truly saddens me that the creators are so eager to jump on “Young people are terrible” that they ignore the key foundation of their universe, namely that Dustin in particular is terrible in a number of specific ways. No woman will ever love Dustin! No busty redhead would ever attempt to flirt with him! C’mon, what are we even doing here.

Dick Tracy, 3/3/24

I’m part of the ever-shrinking group of people who likes to get out to a play now and then, so this strip really made me think: how would I feel if, before the show or maybe between acts, an old man came out and gave a little speech about the history of a classic comic strip? I have to admit that I’d be OK with it. The rest of the crowd? Well, that’s not for me to say.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 3/3/24

Oh, nice, Slick Smitty managed to find one of the few remaining living humans and forge a romantic connection with her! How sweet. And they even have some shared interests! Look, she’s helping him trick Max into digging his own grave!