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Comments of the week coming shortly, but first, a few items of interest! The first comes from faithful reader Zamboni Rodeo, who found and scanned a classic Dick Tracy Sunday strip from Reminisce magazine. (“Mostly it is what you suspect it might be,” he says, “people submitting stories about things from their childhoods and talking about how much better things were way back when. It’s a whole magazine of ‘you kids get off my lawn’ to a certain degree.”) I won’t attempt to make like modern newspapers and shrink the size down to fit the page; you can see the whole thing here if you want. Here’s the best/most terrifying panel:

That creepy child, born with a Crystal Gayle-length mane of hair and held up by some sort of mad scientist in black rubber gloves, is the spawn of B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie, two characters who still figure into Dick Tracy’s madness. The baby is named Sparkle. Sparkle Plenty. You cannot tell me that drugs aren’t involved in this.

Also! Faithful reader Clare points me to Garfield: Lost in Translation, in which the titular fat cat’s dialogue is translated from English to Japanese and back by computer, with generally funny results.

Also also! Faithful Reader Jesse C is preparing his strip, All Too Human, for submission to the syndicates. Help him out by voting on the best ones!

And now, your comment of the week!

“What kind of little boy has a dog named ‘Sassy’? Even I wasn’t that gay.” –Li’l Bunnë FooFoo

And your runners up! There are a lot of them, but there was a lot of good material to work with this week:

“Phantom, Phantom, stripes on his butt/ The ladies like how his jib’s cut.” –Mel

“And so, because Electro couldn’t succeed in sufficiently humiliating himself with that outfit, Spiderman must finish the task for him.” –buckyswife

“If those cleaning chemicals are as caustic as Ruby wanted them to be, we’re probably witnessing the genesis of A3G’s first Batman-style supervillain. Hideously deformed, Doc Joe will wander the criminal underworld for years, resurfacing in a later plotline, to the horror of all: ‘My God, his face! It’s … it’s … actually, he still looks exactly like all the other cleanshaven males I know.'” –Howlin’ Wolf

“Thank goodness for all those expository captions and speech balloons in Apartment 3-G. Based solely on the pictures, it looks like the goodwife upends her milk bucket over a man’s head while James Coburn gives him a shoulder massage. In the final panel, Dame Edna shows up with a cell phone. So much like my dreams, it’s scary.” –Steve S

“It was somewhere between ‘Back off, Joe, or I’ll shoot,’ ‘WHACK WHACK WHACK,’ and ‘Do you girls want me to taser him?’ that I realized I had found my Apartment 3-G Spot.” –Melissa G

“Mrs. Bloom’s soliloquy: I was the flower of the building yes when I put the rag on my hair like the Staten Island girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Tibetan wall in all my red silk yes and I thought well as well him as another and in the harsh glare of the Dakota sun I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my apartment flower how will you Bathroom for me and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume and solvents yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will pull that Tazer from under the pillow and place it like a scapular to his chest and find my trigger and yes Yes.” –Uncle Lumpy

“So is Montoni’s like the Michael Patterson of the pizza world, or do the Funkians only eat there because there are no other restaurants? I’m kind of picturing that scene in 1984 where Winston wonders if there ever was such a thing as food that tasted better than what he gets, only with pizza.” –commodorejohn

“Tommie’s stupefaction in panel two is entirely justified by the sudden tone shift. ‘Um, hello guys? I just went through some serious Cape Fear/The Shining bullshit, and now suddenly we’re all sitcom-laughable with the wacky taser-happy neighbor? Come on, when Lu Ann hallucinated that swirly pastel painter and fainted everyone was sober and concerned for weeks, but I have to Rorschach my way out of a bathroom and all of a sudden it’s Marmaduke??’” –teddytoad

“I don’t think Margo is as much taken aback as jealous that Mrs Bloom is packing superior weaponry. All Margo has on her is her umbrella, a shiv, and a small thermonuclear device, which is not so useful at short range.” –Les of the Jungle Patrol

“All that’s left is for Mary to swoop in and send Adrian to Vietnam. She probably won’t see any red flags there either.” –Uncle Fritzy Ritz

“Ah A3G, where everyone shows just the right level of childish glee at the opportunity to test out a brand new taser. Except of course for Tommie, who hasn’t felt anything since 1997.” –sak

“It’s the extra-large, cop-size tissue box — for manly, police-oriented tears!” –Gadge Cubic, Mole Preener

“At least he didn’t mention that the specter of his dead wife also thinks he’s dating.” –rhymes with puck

“Oh, now I get it. Cayla’s sort of drunk. That’s what makes these ‘dates’ with Les just barely endurable. Good for her.” –sugarpie

“The curious twist in Apartment 3-G is that this entire scenario is a complicated sex game engineered by the secretly-involved Mrs. Bloom and Dr. Kelly. ‘And then they’ll tie you up and put a bucket on your head.’ ‘Yes! And then what?’ ‘Then I’ll use the taser!’ ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!'” –yeff (Jeff Soesbe)

“If you were trying to choose the exact shade of beige that dogs aren’t, you could not choose any better than Jack Elrod has chosen.” –One-eyed Wolfdog

“I have no criticisms or snide remarks for Dick Tracy today. Today’s DT is a thing of beauty, wonder and joy. I only wish that all strips had the brilliant audacity to turn themselves into a constant stream of disorienting, mindless violence perpetuated by the titular characters. It’d make both Cathy and Marvin worth reading, I know that.” –Alan’s Addiction

“I think Toni and Brad are about to have sex! Either she will land face first into Brad’s crotch with her big, plump lips smashed into his junk, or her uniform will come undone as she flies into Brad’s waiting … uh … appendage? Either way, it will be involuntary.” –Desert Ghost

“I see in the third panel that Mark Trail has now morphed into a new comic, The Adventures of Young Karl Malden.” –Capn Gravy

“I’m convinced Pluggers is a stealth campaign to destroy the furry lifestyle. What else could so effectively turn people off to the idea of being a furry? Certainly not prejudice and rejection from mainstream culture!” –avatarjk137

“Which of Brad’s squishy innards did Toni Daytona rupture or lacerate when she flopped off the ladder, driving her oxygen tank into Brad’s barrelly torso?? What, all of them? Good answer!” –Spotted HØrse, Jungle Steed

“I dunno, there is something refreshing about the straightforward laziness of today’s Pluggers. It is like the author just got up on the wrong side of the bed one day and when asking himself for the one millionth time ‘What the hell is a Plugger, anyway?’ he snapped back, ‘Douchebags who still use dial-up! Leave me alone and let me get back to trolling mininova for leaked footage of Wolverine.'” –Reepicheep-chan

“9CL: Like the unholy hybrid offspring of Love is… and a thesaurus.” –Winky’s Spleen

“Everyone thinks Brad is seriously injured, but he’s really just trying to hide the huge erection he got from actually touching his groin to the ass of a woman he isn’t related to.” –Hank

“CAYLA!! WATCH THE ROAD!! WATCH THE ROAD!! YOU’RE A CHARACTER ON DEATHY WINKERDEATH FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD!!” –The Mighty Captian E

“Dead Lisa, being dead, is the only character in FW who is allowed happiness. And as far as I know, dead people don’t get cancer. I say make her the main character.” –Mac

“‘Twitter’ is the sound Sally makes when Ted wrists her. (His hands are too dainty to make a good fist.)” –Comrade Denny

“You hoped Rex Morgan would devolve into gay porn? I was hoping it would rise to gay porn’s level.” –cranky

“That last GT panel is haunting me. It looks like the lead-in to a CSI episode. After analyzing the freeze frame, I can only conclude that Coach fired a blazing fastball directly into Robb’s mouth (note the impact lines), which has come out the back of his skull and evidently is now propelling his baseball cap offstage left as he flails in his death seizure. Bits of flying bone and/or teeth litter the scene for the final grisly touch.” –Talking Squirrel

“I’d like to think, with the way Cayla is holding Les’ head in both hands, that she’s about to say, ‘If you’re still so into your dead wife, why don’t you JOIN HER IN THE BACK SEAT?!’ and then she snaps his neck with military precision.” –Patrick

“Paranormal necrophilia sounds so good when I say it out loud but I’m sure to be disappointed. This is, after all, Funky Winkerbean, the strip that delights in reader disappointment.” –thurston unger

“I predict Funky laying off Les to save money. Les won’t be able to afford Summer’s college and Summer will start taking steroids in order to play better and get a scholarship and… I could go on, but I won’t. Let’s just assume it ends in tragedy, shall we? Mime death for everyone!” –zooby

“Speaking of 24/7 Big Brother style monitoring, Skyler has just realized his technologically incompetent uncle, unable to get news from anywhere but the long since cancelled newspapers, is unaware that The Regime has banned making jokes forever on pain of death, and that he is watching the old man’s mercifully short final moments.” –Black Drazon

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Luann, 4/13/09

After a week of Gunther “Clueless Doofus” Berger and Luann “Woo Me!” DeGroot, we’re back at last to Brad “Clueless Doofus” DeGroot and Toni “Woo Me!” Daytona. This strip sure does know how to mix it up! You’ve got to admire how Brad slips in that a) this invitation is for breakfast only, so there will be no squicky sex going on, and b) TJ will be there, so the wall-to-wall squickiness will have nothing to do with sex.

Shoe, 4/13/09

Pluggers, lacking only the good taste, restraint, and simple human compassion.

Slylock Fox, 4/13/09

Ah, Casa Shrew, just as we’d imagined it. Looks like Sly will be rethinking this part-time gig as building inspector, as soon as he takes a moment to hurl.

And, in other news . . .

Garfield, 4/13/09

Hmm. Garfield minus Garfield, with Garfield. Not quite clear where this is headed.

Dick Tracy, 4/13/09

. . . and a big hand for new Dick Tracy artist Jim Brozman — just like the one he gave us in panel three there.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Hello all! Your comments of the week coming shortly, but … hey, remember last summer when a reader pointed out that Blondie was just rerunning strips from the ’50s? Good times! Now evidence comes from faithful reader Shannon that the Family Circus apparently thinks the comics statute of limitations is even shorter!

When I saw piggish little Billy chastising Miss McElfresh for “shopping” when she was supposedly “sick,” I knew immediately that I’d seen that panel in one of the FC books I’d had when I was a kid. I wasn’t sure if I still had the book in question, but found it when I went rummaging through some old boxes. I scanned the panel in question (which is from ’70 or ’71) and am sending it along to you.

You’ll note that the panel has not been substantially redrawn, though there are some tweaks: the dialogue has been rearranged into the innovative new “partly in word balloons” system, the old chalkboard has been transformed into a modern dry-erase whiteboard, and of course the solid Miss Johnson has been replaced by some piece of ethnic trash. The strip’s obsession with the thought that our children are being taught by flighty whores who might enjoy personal adornment is still front and center, however.

Shannon was also kind enough to send me a scan of the cover of the collection from which the original panel derived:

“Today it might be better titled Hello, Child Protective Services?”, he says.

Also! I got the following intriguing email from faithful reader Dave, currently living in China!

I am an SAT tutor in Shanghai. Rent is a little expensive here so I kind of live way out in the middle of nowhere. However, there are a lot of little alleyway restaurants where you can get a good meal for under 2 bucks U.S. Last night, I was on my way to such a place when I discovered that Garfield had somehow found his way to my neighborhood, looking sassy as ever. As you can see, he is either coming on to me or he wants to eat me. I guess this is where he goes when he leaves Jon to stew in existential terror.

PS: This Garfield was not hocking any Davis goods or anything even remotely related to Garfield. He was really just chilling outside a cheap, back-alley Chinese food restaurant. I have no idea why he was there.

There is something unspeakably creepy about the way Garfield is looking at the camera here. Dave, for not screaming aloud and fleeing in terror into the night, you are to be commended.

And now, it’s time for … your comment of the week!

“TJ’s background is obvious. He was created in a lab using the combined DNA of Arsenio Hall, Liberace, and a Portuguese Water Dog.” –Charlene

And the runners up! Very funny!

“It is a sad, sad criminal conspiracy that can be derailed by a picture on Rusty’s Flickr page. Just turn yourselves in now, boys. There’s no hope.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“I didn’t realize he had batted the alarm clock; I instead thought he projectile-shat onto the wall. Either way, his dexterity is amazing.” –Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol

“Hot Hot Hot. A threeway with Love Story Ryan O’Neal and What’s Up, Doc? Ryan O’Neal. Lucky lucky Tommie circa 1972.” –Cranky

“Curtis’s dad’s expression is not one of surprise or amusement. My guess, given the circumstances, is that Curtis’s incessant anti-smoking hounding has finally driven him to replace his instant coffee mix with pure Skoal.” –Dragon of Life

“Wow, you know what I just realized? A picture shows images of things. That could include our faces! And our faces are wanted! Um, is it legal to kill a kid with a camera? Oh, what do I care. I’m a wanted man! I can kill anybody!” –un malpaso

“Jack Elrod is atoning for the chauvinist sins of the last storyline by giving the ladies in the audience what they’ve been clamoring for: a prison-hardened reimagining of My Dinner With Andre. You’re welcome, ladies.” –Joe Blevins

“I am not a pork item in the stimulus package … unless you want me to be. Wink wink. Anyone? Anyone? No? I WILL DO ANYTHING FOR MONEY UP TO AND INCLUDING THAT WHICH IS EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN BY SEVERAL DIFFERENT LAWS AND RELIGIOUS TEXTS.” –Nate

“Tommie makes her move! Of course, almost any price would be worth it to get rid of that horrible blue, um, sports coat thing from Gary, but I still admire Tommie for being willing to offer her body as a reward for his removing it.” –Master Softheart

“I refuse to believe TJ’s story until he mentions the years as an underage gigolo and the stroke that paralyzed his face. Preferably in the same anecdote.” –150

“I don’t care if TJ’s father was a con, or his mom died. My only question is that grin. I need an origin story on that grin. Did his mother die of Smiley Sardonic Rictusosis? Did his dad go to jail for stealing his son’s lips?” –Spk

“Mark and family are apparently considered the local technology superstars, the Lost Forest version of Steve Jobs if you will, based on the fact that they can be uniquely identified as ‘the folks with the camera.'” –DaveyK

“The Greaser and Workshirt plot could be the beginning of an absurdist parable where the infinitely distracted heroes never arrive at any destination: ‘Workshirt, when we were renting the car to go to Lost Forest, the Avis guy got a good look at us. Better head over there and kidnap him.’ ‘Greaser, that gas station we stopped in on the way to Lost Forest had a security camera; I’m gonna go ask them to sell me the footage.’ ‘Good thinking, Workshirt. Now let’s pull over and ask these innocent bystanders for directions … D’oh! The innocent bystanders made us!’ And so on, an endless Finnegan-Begin Again loop of covered tracks.” –Tim Cavanaugh

“Clint Brawny and Emily Armfull are scions of a paper-towel and baking-soda fortune, respectively. Blondie and Dagwood came up with a plan to seduce them on purpose, because, frankly, there’s nothing more important to either of the Bumsteads than a clean kitchen and an inviting refrigerator.” –BigTed

“Sam, fully aware that this can only end in her turning into another one of the strip’s buxom pinups, oversees the transition with a look of intensest ennui.” –Black Drazon

“I don’t know what this impostor strip is, but it’s not Judge Parker. I know that because there are no scantily clad women, nor men discussing inanely trivial details of their latest lucrative career ventures. We all know those are the only two themes allowed in the Judge Parker strip.” –Alan’s Addiction

“It is a little disconcerting for him to call her ‘Princess’ and her to call him ‘Sam’. Sorta like he’s saying, ‘Let me love you like a father!’ and her reply is ‘Can’t we just be friends?’ Which is odd, because Sam normally doesn’t give a shit about feelings or affection.” –Donald the Anarchist

“Oh sure, you think she’s cute now, when she’s fetching you beer and peanuts with her lowered eyes and her little apron on. But you won’t think so later, when you’re cowering in a hollow tree incubating one giant egg after another for a dozen weeks at a time.” –Joe Btfsplk

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