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Gasoline Alley, 6/11/24

So, the reason the electricity went out at Walt’s is that a big tree fell over and pulled down the power line running from the utility pole to the house, and now some guys from the power company have come out in the middle of the night to repair it. This is, obviously, annoying, and could easily be the most annoying thing that would happen to you in a given year, if your year was pretty good overall, but I do not think it could in any way be described as an “unbelievable ordeal.” It’s actually quite easy to believe! You think Walt and Gertie are going to describe it to other people and they’ll say “My God, you can’t be serious”? No, it’ll be more like “Oh wow, that sounds annoying. Nice that the power company came out to fix it in the middle of the night, though.”

Dick Tracy, 6/11/24

If we’re going to go through the trouble of continuing to make Dick Tracy comics, then I suppose part of that process has to be about exploring how Dick Tracy and his friends and foes would interact with modern-day stuff. I feel ambivalent about it, but I respect that they want to do it rather than just rehash golden age Dick Tracy stuff endlessly, and I have to say that I am marginally more intrigued to find out what Dick Tracy thinks about cryptocurrency than I was to find out what he thinks about furries.

Bizarro, 6/11/24

There are two things I love about this comic. The first is that the snowman outside the apartment has clearly spent a lot of time sculpting his snow-body into the flowing shape of a ethereal spectre, but is big enough to recognize that his friend’s cheap prop humor is more likely to win kudos than his own more subtle work. The second is that Bizarro has, in a bold refusal to adhere to conventions, chosen to do a joke about snowmen going to a Halloween party in the middle of the summer.

The Phantom, 6/11/24

A classic bit I do on my blog is to look at a day’s comic and say “Ha ha, surely the next development in this strip will be [something that is far too silly to ever happen in a comic strip]”, and a classic bit that the comics do in response is to produce a subsequent development that’s substantially sillier than I predicted. Anyway, I apologize for joking that “Space-Ox,” the private rocket company in the current Phantom storyline, is run by Elon Musk Ox (he’s just like Elon Musk, but also an ox). In fact, it’s run by Ian Mollusk (he’s just like Elon Musk, but also a snail).

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Gasoline Alley, 6/1/24

Uh oh, looks like the electricity is out all over Gasoline Alley! I guess electricity has decided, in the wake of the rejection of the proposed “Electric Acres” renaming, that it isn’t wanted there any more. And who can blame it? Tough luck, Walt! Enjoy drinking your precious gasoline, in the dark!

Blondie, 6/1/24

I’ve always found the ways shoes are drawn in Blondie weird and off-putting, but I don’t think I ever actually tried to imagine the way the feet underneath them look. Well, thanks to today’s strip, now I have, and I wish I hadn’t. I don’t care for it.

Dennis the Menace, 6/1/24

Hey, Dennis, buddy, if you don’t have a good bit of menace in the chamber, you shouldn’t force it. You don’t have to be “always on”! You could just get the garbage bags and bide your time till the next opportunity arises.

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Gasoline Alley, 5/17/24

OK, see, I get that Assistant Mayor Elbert Imeswine was the villain of the “Electric Acres” arc, but he doesn’t seem to be based on any particular real-life person and was dispatched without ever having been very threatening. But still, the way he haunts Walt’s dreams as this truly vile vampire pig caricature implies a level of vitriol held by the very artist who created him that I honestly find puzzling. This looks like the way you’d draw a local politician you were in the midst of a decade-long feud with if you were the political cartoonist on the staff of the local paper, or the way you’d draw a representation of some ethnic group that you were extremely racist against.

Dennis the Menace, 5/17/24

Normally, I’m fine with Dennis the Menace’s weird quirk where they think a tuxedo is normal workware at Henry’s engineering (?) job. But today it actively detracts from the joke, which is about how Dennis thinks his spirit will remain free forever despite arbitrary punishments, but eventually he’ll be chained to a eight-hour day and a paycheck, just like his father. This would work better if he were wearing normal business casual or even a suit, but in this getup, he looks like he’s coming home from his job as a butler or as James Bond, either of which would have a different vibe to it in my opinion.