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Dick Tracy, 12/15/18

Oh, hey, we’re back to the plot about Vitamin Flintheart and his heavily pregnant bride-to-be. In today’s installment, a stagehand at the play Vitamin is in (where he’s playing himself, natch, this is a strip that never misses a chance to collapse into meta-narrative in an attempt to impress you with how famous its characters are), makes a crass advance on Kandikane, leading Vitamin to loom over him with implied violence. In case you were tired of the extremely not sexy storyline about faxing and invoices, he’s a storyline that’s extremely not sexy but in, like, an entirely different way.

Gil Thorp, 12/15/18

Oh wow, I know panel one is supposed be a “cinematic,” foreshortened look down on our mysterious billboard renter, but it … doesn’t really work well, at all. He looks like a gibbon. A gibbon in glasses. It’s bad, man. Somebody should’ve stopped this.

Also, since the question is “Is Mediocre Good Enough,” to really knock ’em over with the answer, the answer has to be “yes!” Which will allow Gil and this year’s wacky crew of basketball players (seen in panel two engaging in extremely inscrutable antics) to muddle through yet another .550 season unmolested.

Six Chix, 12/15/18

The point of a strip like this is to contrast the wholesome book-acquisition in panel two with what we initially assumed to be her much darker quest, but I’m not really buying it. C’mon lady, you gotta sell it. What are you willing to do to get what you need? Are you willing to kill?

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Gil Thorp, 12/6/18

Well, our Gil Thorp plots have, in traditional Gil Thorp fashion, combined into a semi-satisfying conclusion: Tiki Jansen, forced into a little light address fraud in order to escape his erstwhile criminal associates, enlisted the help of irritating movie buff and emergency substitute punter Joe Bolek in recording himself fleeing in terror from his old schoolmates, with the resulting piece of cinéma vérité praised both for its polemical power and for its mise en scène. I’m reasonably sure that it’s been established that the Mudlarks are in no way in playdown contention, which leaves only one loose plot thread remaining: namely, that Kaz holds his girlfriend Kelly and her intellectual film tastes in open contempt. Things could get really interesting if, for instance, some young Fellini aficionado like Joe Bolek were to wander into Kelly’s travel agency and told her he was “thinking about Italy,” if you know what I mean. (“Italy” refers to watching some Fellini movies and then having sex, and then talking about the movies afterwards, instead of just rolling over and falling immeidately sleep like certain assistant coaches we could mention.)

Barney Google and Snuff Smith, 12/6/18

Hear that, whiny libs? You don’t need big government helping you with your medical bills; you just need someone to beat the shit out of you so you can’t actually spend money other frivolities like poker. Wait, is the implication here that Snuffy got beat up during a poker game, because he cheats all the time? This is really a self-solving problem when you think about it.

Dick Tracy, 12/6/18

Ah, it seems that Polar Vortex’s sinister plot, focused on faxing and slow-walking invoice payments, has been brought down in ironic fashion, because the evil crime syndicate’s record-keeping was too meticulous. We’ve heard enough — time for the cops to show up and brutalize a lot of people with flagrant disregard for due process!

Mary Worth, 12/6/18

I guarantee that Mary doesn’t remember who or what “Jimmy” is, but it doesn’t matter. She learned from the sad story of Saul’s lost love Mia that an animal can plug the emotional hole that a dead human left behind, and she learned from the sad story of Saul’s lost dog Bella that you can also just plug the hole a dead animal leaves behind with another animal. So … do you like cats, Estelle? Remember, as building manager Mary has keys to everyone’s apartments, so even if you say no she’s just going to put the cat in there anyway.

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Gasoline Alley, 11/24/18

Today is the actual 100^th anniversary of Gasoline Alley — the longest-running comic strip still publishing new material ever since The Katzenjammer Kids went into reruns back in 2006. Sincere congratulations to Jim Scancarelli for his gorgeous old-school draftsmanship — that’s an actual pen he’s using right there — and a daily look back at a mythic America that disappeared after World War II — one populated by comical junkmen, back-alley auto mechanics, lovable hoboes, itinerant fraudsters, and radio voice actors.

Now can we please end the four-month self-congratulatory wankfest, park Walt in the Old Comics Home for good, and get back to wallowing in lovingly rendered Hoogy tush?

Crankshaft, 11/24/18

You know, I think Mary may be on to something here. We all think of Crankshaft as a bitter, self-loathing ignoramus, and who will say us nay? But what if the root cause of his repulsiveness is that he’s completely incapable of abstract thought? It would explain his rage as he careers randomly through an incoherent universe of punctate sense-experiences, comforted only by chance repetition — the droning monotony of football plays, familiar snap of a mailbox behind his bus, annual blast of fire from an overfueled grill, or daily necrotic reek of Lena’s coffee.

You object, “But he’s just being an asshole!” and Ed cracks a little grin. That word, like all others, is just noise to him, but at least he’s heard it before. So many times, it feels like an old friend.

Dick Tracy, 11/24/18

I’m really starting to worry about this Vorkov guy here. Near as I can tell, he’s taking funds legally entrusted to him and spreading them around in ways that are pretty routine but don’t match the beneficiary’s intent. That’s all loathesome ‘n’ stuff I guess, except:

• The beneficiary, Peter Pitchblende, is a moron, squandering his inheritance trying to resurrect the reputations of long-forgotten third-rate Martin and Lewis copycats. In the very worst interpretation, Vorkov merely missed the filing deadline to have Pitchblende declared incompetent.
• This is essentially the same con outlined in the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-13). How bad can your grift be when it’s approved in the New Testament by Jesus the Actual Christ?

Maybe Vorkov, a second-generation crime boss, isn’t really evil at all, but was brought up to think he’s a criminal mastermind? So he spends his ordinary days faxing, paying bills, and managing payroll, but all in that ridiculous makeup, tenting his fingers and gleaming his teeth, pausing now and again to cackle “BWA-HA-HA.”

Curtis, 11/24/18

Greg, let me bring you up to date: these days, a million-dollar 2BR in Harlem looks like your place. No hovering required!

Mark Trail, 11/24/18

Heads up, kids! David Lee Roth is closing in!

Hello again, faithful reader! I’m sitting in for Josh through Sunday December 2, so if you’ve got any site access or other issues, reach me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net. Enjoy!

— Uncle Lumpy