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Dick Tracy, 3/26/19

Oh, huh, I must be losing it, because a couple weeks ago when we were introduced to a new character, a cocky local sports reporter and columnist, it had already slipped my mind that a couple weeks before that we had already been offered a glimpse of a stab-happy sports reporter! I guess this is all just some kind of intra-jock feud. Anyway, this is part of the Dick Tracy narrative M.O. in which the perp is always the most obvious person and the “drama” comes from the MCU’s dogged and violent pursuit of the that person, not any kind of clever “solving” of “crimes” or anything like that. Meanwhile, I can’t tell if “It wasn’t you, was it?” is meant to signify “Oh no, I married a murderer, how could I have been so blind?” or “Ugh, you promised you wouldn’t murder any more gym teachers, can’t you just do this one little thing for me?”

Gil Thorp, 3/26/19

I certainly hope all this mysterious talk of “family stuff” is referring to the Human Family, a local doomsday cult who’s been heavily recruiting Milford teenagers this year. “Well! That explains things,” says Mohawk Guy, around hour four into the Patriarch’s sermon in which he blames the failure of the Cleansing to arrive on the appointed date on the corruption of the “real” Mayan calendar by Spanish conquistadors.

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Curtis, 3/25/19

Curtis is one of those strips that spends most of its time circling around the same 10 or so jokes, and it does it with such workmanlike skill that I read and enjoy it daily even though I don’t really talk about it much here. I will say that after so many years it clearly gets tougher coming up with variations on the template, which is why I’m excited that this installment of “Barry is disgusted by Curtis mooning over Michelle” is about to take a turn into surrealistic body horror, with his intestines bursting through his OshKosh B’goshes and flailing all over the place.

Dick Tracy, 3/25/19

Well, the press has finally settled on its nickname for the serial killer who’s murdering all those teachers, and it’s … “The Teacher’s Pet”? Do … do they know this name usually signifies an affectionate relationship with a teacher? I dunno, maybe it’s OK that the newspapers are all going bankrupt.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/25/19

“I have to say, this is quite the odd coincidence, of the sort that might lay the groundwork for an intriguing storyline!”

“I can see why you might think that at first glance, but let me assure you that the actual explanation is entirely banal.”

“Oh well! I suppose I’ll just sit here facing forward in silence for the rest of the flight, then. Good luck to you!”

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Spider-Man, 3/21/19

I am, genuinely, done making fun here. If Newspaper Spider-Man wants to spend its last few days in the media landscape engaged in utterly pointless bait-and-switches over readership expectations vis-à-vis whether or not Peter is or is not wearing his spider-costume under his shirt, then I say go for it. One of the very first sequences I went through that really taught me what this strip was all about came in 2005, in which Peter’s undergarments were or perhaps were not a problem, with the changes having nothing to do with Peter’s own on-panel efforts. My point is that this feature is going out very much on its own terms. We should all be so lucky.

Family Circus, 3/21/19

One of my least favorite Family Circus things — and lord knows there’s a list — is when some semi-universal cultural touchstone unfolds in real life, like the Olympics or the NCAA basketball tournament, and we’re expected to believe that the Keane kids can’t stop pulling catchphrases from it. It took me a second to notice that Dolly is rubbing her arm here, indicating (I assume) that Billy hit her with the ball, or maybe just punched her and then quickly grabbed a ball so that he could say “I didn’t punch her! Both my hands are clearly occupied in holding this ball!”; before I realized that, I thought maybe he had just farted.

Gil Thorp, 3/21/19

I’m not really a “sports guy” so I sometimes I find myself in the position of wondering what it is that’s confusing me about Gil Thorp: the sport content or the trademark choppy narrative. Like, today, I don’t get why the idea of a scrimmage seems so freighted, and I don’t understand half of what Gil is talking about in panel two. But I do sincerely hope that panel three takes place nine days later, that the scrimmage drama was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, and that the phone call Mimi is wrapping up here is acknowledging that and we never hear anything else about it.

Dick Tracy, 3/21/19

“It’s your case too, Joe. Go ahead, rifle through the drawers and get your fingerprints all over everything. Take a dump in the middle of the floor! Nobody can stop you!”