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Dick Tracy, 5/11/19

Oh hey, turns out I got bored with Dick Tracy’ Minit Mystery when it suddenly became be less about municipal politics and more about a leftist radical cop killer for hire (?) who killed a lady cop and that led to the local police apparatus violently cracking down on all local organized crime in civil rights violating ways, but now it turns out that, oops, the real cop killer was the lady cop’s husband! “Oops,” says Dick, “I was so obsessed with gangsters that I forgot that 55 percent of women in the U.S. are killed by intimate partners, which you’d think would be a stat at the top of your mind if you’re a person who solves murders for a living. Anyway, sorry about all the organized crime prosecutions we screwed up, by arresting a bunch of gangsters without warrants for no good reason.”

Gil Thorp, 5/11/19

Oh, hey, turns out that once the softball team got super into having interests outside of school, everyone wanted to get in on the “having outside interests” action, which they dubbed as “being too cool for school,” for some reason. Anyway, today’s the day when this relatively harmless trend pivots to becoming the ideological core of a revolutionary vanguard party!

Mark Trail, 5/11/19

Oh, hey, turns out that buzzing sound in Mark Trail was, as I predicted, bees. Bees, everyone! Ha ha, Mark is running away from a bunch of bees!

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Judger Parker, 5/4/19

I’m trying to remember exactly to what degree Sam and/or Abbey’s fingerprints would be on any aspect of the Great Norton Caper (in which, just to remind you, Judge Parker Emeritus helped April’s dad fake his death) that’s about to be revealed in a tell-all book, and honestly? I’m not sure that there are any! Which is great — for Sam. He can just quietly hang up the phone and then go back to planning how to charge the rubes $250 a night on AirBnB to stay in Marie’s old servant’s hovel ($175 if they just want to sleep in the horse barn), and start practicing saying “Judge Parker? Judge Parker? Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Mark Trail, 5/4/19

God bless Mark Trail for dedicating an entire day’s strip for establishing how theatrically sleepy all its characters are! The only one missing is JJ. I certainly hope come Monday he gets a whole strip to himself to stretch ostentatiously.

Gil Thorp, 5/4/19

Not gonna lie, folks: I personally relate to few people in the comics more than the guy in panel one, who tried to come up with something complimentary to say to a pretty, popular girl on the softball team and ended up blurting out “Way to … mash … the ball” as he awkwardly high-fives her in the hallway. He’s gonna be thinking about that for years to come.

Hi and Lois, 5/4/19

Hi, she’s … she’s right there, man

I’m pretty sure she can hear you

Not cool

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/19

Hey, remember last year in Crankshaft when a poor little girl was buying a book on “layaway,” a few pennies at a time, from Lilian’s unlicensed bookstore, so Crankshaft bought it for her, but she turned out to be a little grifter running a scam? I guess “people will respond to basic acts of human decency by attempting to profit off your kindness” is a Funkyverse thing now, which has a different kind of depressing valence than “the universe will snuff out your happiness with arbitrary tragedy.” Not sure where the obvious anger simmering under today’s strip is coming from, unless it’s based on the belief that there’s some kind of lucrative secondary market for signed Funky Winkerbean art, which I can assure you there is not.

Dick Tracy, 5/1/19

Ugh, the whole point of Minit Mysteries is that there supposed to be quick and simple and not … full of just endless text about small town administrative terminology and the minutia of the local criminal syndicate’s org chart. I’m not going to read this, you hear me? I’m not. I’m getting older, I only have a limited amount of brain space anymore, and I need to focus it on what brings me joy.

Gil Thorp, 5/1/19

See, I accidentally learned that the town in Dick Tracy has a “president” instead of a mayor and it made me forget the name of the the reporter who isn’t adversarial towards the Thorps and all they stand for. I want to say it’s … Marcie? Is that right? Anyway, I mostly am here to point out that Marty Moon would never let Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp go off the record to say “Yeah, I’m definitely surprised this team isn’t doing as badly as I 100% expected them to do.” Of course, she also went off the record to say “There’s a swagger and spirit to this team that’s infectious,” which is like a perfect coach sound bite, so really Mimi’s whole media relations strategy is pretty muddled.

The Phantom, 5/1/19

The Phantom is not exactly known for its verisimilitude, but I do absolutely believe that the shadowy guerilla warriors guarding terrorist compounds deep in the African desert spend more time than you’d think dicking around on their phones.