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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, 12/14/18

Yesssss, some mysterious character is in fact taunting the Milford athletic department via billboards, just like those guys in Buffalo, or, less relevantly but I suppose more at the top of the collective cultural consciousness, Frances McDormand’s character in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Given the outsized importance high school athletics holds in the Greater Milford Micropolitan Area, it’s wholly appropriate that our antagonist here beholds his work like a cackling supervillain unveiling his doomsday device.

Family Circus, 12/14/18

Jeffy thought that once he had killed Santa, the shackles of “nice” and “naughty” that had defined his life were broken forever. But there was one thing he hadn’t reckoned with: Santa’s ghost.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/14/18

The Minutes Will Feel Like Hours™: That’s the Rex Morgan, M.D.,® promise!

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Mary Worth, 12/10/18

It’s been two and a half years since new-ish Mary Worth artist June Brigman took over the strip and we’ve seen most of our beloved major players at this point. Almost all of them have gotten what I would call aesthetic upgrades of varying degrees of subtlety — Mary has been glammed up most of all — but I think the improvements to Dr. Jeff’s boat are on a whole different level. This is the only image of it I can find in my archives, but y ou can see that it used to be a somewhat dumpy pleasure craft with a roof, suitable for tooling around Santa Royale harbor at extremely limited speeds. Now it’s a sleek cigarette boat, perfect for zooming out into the Pacific and letting the wind ruffle your hair, and if Dr. Jeff wanted to make a side trip to the coast of Baja to pick up some black-market pills that he can “prescribe” to his friends and neighbors, he can do so knowing he’ll be back at the Bum Boat in time for their 5:15 reservation.

Gil Thorp, 12/10/18

Let me tell you an Extremely Buffalo Story: in the fall of 2009, I went to Buffalo, New York, where I grew up, to visit my family. The coach of the Bills at that time was Dick Jauron, who had muddled through three consecutive 7-9 seasons and wasn’t doing much better that year. The day I arrived, a billboard on the Thruway near Ralph Wilson Stadium had been unveiled that simply said “FIRE DICK JAURON,” and that evening, the very top story on Channel 4’s local news was an exclusive interview with the dudes who had rented the billboard — and yes, it was just these three extremely Buffalo-looking dudes, with sweatshirts and mustaches, and when asked why they had pooled a not insignificant amount of cash to send this message, one of them looked straight into the camera and said, extremely sincerely, “Well, somebody had to do something.” And then, a few weeks later, the Bills did fire Dick Juaron. Sometimes, the system works! In hopefully related news, I’m extremely looking forward to this year’s basketball-season Gil Thorp storyline.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/10/18

Against all odds and good sense, we’re apparently going to be treated to even more of the “Funky’s dad is horny” storyline this week, and while I still overall find it distasteful I gotta admit that I didn’t see this twist coming, where Funky’s dad seduces Holly’s mom and then Holly and Funky become brother and sister. Awkward!