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Family Circus, 3/11/19

Look, I long ago gave up on trying to figure out how exactly the process operates behind the scenes of long-running legacy comic strips, so I’m not sure why we got two Family Circus panels in the last three years with different art but essentially the same joke. Is this just a case of someone unconsciously coming up with the same joke twice and then redrawing a Dolly-praying-before-bed panel, or, perhaps more likely, pulling out a different entry from the presumably fairly sizable collection of Dolly-praying-before-bed panels? Or are the two panels meant to be companion pieces? Back in 2016, Dolly said the pledge because she couldn’t think of any “new” prayers. Today, she couldn’t even remember the Lord’s Prayer, perhaps the most important in the Christian canon, because all the space in her mind dedicated to devotional rituals is now occupied by nationalistic display. Truly, the Keane Kompound is under seige!

Dick Tracy, 3/11/19

The joke here is that Joe Sampson, the detective who came to town last week with lurid tales of gym teach murder, is Dick’s daughter Bonnie’s ex. But if you didn’t know that, you might think that Dick is just furious that Bonnie isn’t hanging on his every word. “Bonnie? How dare you be distracted, a man is talking.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/11/19

Hootin’ Holler is grindingly poor, with an economy revolving around subsistence farming, moonshining, and chicken theft, and it’s an open question as to how the various outsiders who come into town to serve professional roles eke out a living. Parson Tuttle makes it work with relentless and unapologetic grifting, but Doc Pritchart has it easier: his practice is just a front for nonstop Medicaid fraud.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/11/19

“That would mean someone might want to spend enough time with me to have a sexual relationship some day, and, really: have you gotten a handle on my personality over the past few hours? I don’t think that’s in the cards.”

Slylock Fox, 3/11/19

“Ha ha, it’s a baby! A baby was born on board! Pretty wild, huh? Now everyone calm down and let’s figure out which one of us has to drown. Should it be the baby?”

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Gil Thorp and Dick Tracy, 3/8/19

“Cinematic universes” are all the rage lately, as the twelve or so corporations that own all of broadcasting and publishing try to squeeze synergy out of whatever grab-bag of intellectual property they’ve assembled out of the last decade or so of agglutinative media mergers. One of those companies is Tribune Publishing (briefly known as Tronc), which hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory lately, and its current roster of comics is no match for Marvel or DC. Still, I’m pretty excited about this epic crossover event that will launch the Tronc Extended Universe, in which Marty Moon, having been humiliated by Gil for the last time, starts killing gym teachers and coaches across the country, honing his skills until the day he’s ready to take down his nemesis.

Marvin, 3/8/19

It is kind of sad that Jeff and Jenny have spent their entire date night talking about their awful baby, and it’s weird considering how happy they look. I guess they were probably mostly talking about how far away their awful baby is, and how they can’t hear or even smell him, even a little!

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Dick Tracy, 2/18/19

In case for some reason you’re interested in how the various strands of the current Dick Tracy plot fit together: Splitface, who used to be Haf and Haf, also used to be married to Zelda the high diver, who is also Vitamin Flintheart’s goddaughter, and was I think going to go on a date with the drunkard playing Dick in the play Vitamin is in, but then she got kidnapped by Splitface, who used to be Haf and Haf and also her husband, despite the fact that she had been assigned a police protection detail because Splitface, who used to be Haf and Haf, had sworn vengeance on her for some reason I forget now, possibly because he’s insane, I dunno, it’s Dick Tracy, it’s not super nuanced. Anyway, it sure is a lousy break for Zelda, isn’t it? Getting kidnapped by her deranged ex-husband, who presumably wants to murder her or worse? Just a piece of darn rotten luck that certainly the agency that knew about the threat to her and promised to protect her isn’t responsible for in any way.

Family Circus, 2/18/19

Oh, snap, is the Family Circus going to get political? It’s a good thing Big Daddy Keane is wearing that kevlar vest, as this single-panel comic in which kids say the darndest things was the last bit of shared pop culture holding our frayed national fabric together, and now that’s “gone partisan” the violent civil war is about to erupt.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/18/19

Ha ha, it’s funny because Linda has to choose between retiring comfortably and spending time with her addled husband as he rapidly declines! Like, literally, that’s the joke here in today’s knee-slapping Funky Winkerbean, a newspaper comic they print where children can see it!