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So, today was the 75th anniversary of the beginning of Dick Tracy! Many of the strips distributed by the same syndicate offered their tributes today, which were for the most part significantly less wanktastic than Blondie’s endless anniversary hijinks. The awards for the two least seamless nods go to:

Gil Thorp, 10/4/06

Gil Thorp, which features a namecheck by a teenager who never reads the paper and wouldn’t read a 75-year-old comic strip if he did, and who was at most two years old when the most recent movie incarnation of the franchise came out; and…

Shoe, 10/4/06

Shoe, which features Detective Tracy’s severed head in a case behind Roz’s bar, with death’s grim rictus forcing him to feign amusement at this awful joke.

In non-Dick Tracy news:

Mary Worth, 10/4/06

Actually, it seems to me that in a single evening you corrected things quite nicely.

Seriously, I’m really beginning to believe that Mary and her crew are just going to talk themselves into a sense of guiltless satisfaction. If this is the beginning of the all-singing, all-dancing, all-sociopathic Mary Worth, then I’m going to just embrace it and run with it. I can’t wait to see what murderous crimes they’re going to escalate to next! “Yes, perhaps crucifying Mr. Jenkins in the Charterstone courtyard and leaving him to die over a period of days was a bit harsh, but he did tread on the flowerbed, and there is a sign warning against doing just that, so in a real sense, this is all his doing.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/4/06

Wow. So, it looks like June and Heather are on the verge of a full-on makeout session, with Rex watching from afar and thinking “ME LIKEY!” Could this strip get any more polymorpheously perverse — or divorced from its ostensible narrative content?

June seems pretty upset that Heather’s petty personal problems have ruined her vacation plans. I’m surprised Heather even bothers to bring up her mother’s feelings, which are clearly not as important as June’s, who had already picked out the kilt Rex was going to wear. All this clan stuff sounds promising to me, though; Heather’s English, if I remember right, so maybe we’ll get into some kind of Anglo-Scot hatred storyline that will baffle the vast majority of Americans for whom all “those people over there” are pretty much indistinguishable.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 10/4/06

YEAH, THAT’S JUST HOW IT IS! ‘CAUSE YOU STILL LOVE HER, BUT SHE LOATHES THE VERY SIGHT OF YOU! WHAT’RE YA GONNA DO? HAW HAW! Ah, whimsy.

UPDATE: So it turns out that “David Tarafa” is actually faithful reader and occasional commentor Lambnesiac, who is the first Curmudgeonite to be successfully TDIETed. And, uh, whose marriage is I’m sure much, much healthier than the Scadutotization would have you believe. Uh. Heh.

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So much to cover from this weekend’s developments!

In Mary Worth, Ian demonstrated that the hot air that keeps his chest puffed up is of a sufficient pressure to withstand Toby’s feeble pounding.

In Gil Thorp, somebody admired somebody else’s shapely buttocks.

Rex Morgan, M.D., proved that even sinister poverty-stricken skanks recognize high-quality salami when they see it.

In Mark Trail, we learn that Mark’s wildlife-identification skills may not have been all that he made them out to be.

And in Apartment 3-G, we discover that Margo first reaction to the disappearance of one of her roommates is “more food for me”…

…and that, against all odds, the Professor is getting more action than anyone else in this strip.

But still, I think the most important events this weekend happened in Judge Parker.

Judge Parker, 9/29-10/1/06

So we all knew that Reggie Black’s “family values”-based campaign against the mysteriously single, suspiciously well-groomed, and blatantly porn-star-named Randy Parker would be hilarious. What we didn’t know was that it would be a full-on frontal attack on heterosexuality itself. After all, the strip seems to be saying, any woman you marry will just turn into a tubby, emotionally abusive drunken lout who, if not for the 80s-vintage glasses and earrings, resembles nobody so much as Brent Raptor’s mom. And if that’s where the straight lifestyle leads, gentlemen, wouldn’t we all be better off in the company of men?

Judge Parker, 10/2/06

On Monday, meanwhile, the strip posits a related thesis: that heterosexuals should not be allowed to perform makeovers.

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For Better Or For Worse, 9/29/06

Boy, the icy specter of death sure shut those kids up quick, didn’t it. I think Michael and Deanna need to keep this in mind for the future. “Be quiet, Meredith! Your Grandpa Ted just had a massive heart attack!” “I DON’T HAVE A GWAMPA TED!” “Yes you do, and you love him very much. Now get in bed, dammit.”

A lot of people have asked me for my opinion on the impending death of Grandpa Jim. I’m just glad that it stopped being a source of punny punchlines after the first day or two.

Gil Thorp, 9/29/06

Gil Thorp is well known of its radical leftist views, so I think it’s pretty clear that this latest plot development is part of a larger political allegory. See, student body VP Marcus Newton is a stand-in for US VP Dick Cheney. Just as Newton was responsible for blowing up an innocent mailbox, Dick Cheney is responsible for engineering the invasion of Iraq. And Newton’s swift deposition for his crimes represents the strip’s author’s fantasies that Cheney will be impeached for his own misdeeds and removed from office. And Stormy Hicks is a stand-in for … um … the football-playing drag queen that will replace Cheney. OK, that last part needs work.

Gil Thorp is also well known for its ludicrous hairstyles, but the combination bun-bob on the guidance counselor here is really pushing the envelope. Is it even physically possible?

Blondie, 9/29/06

Welcome to the panopticon, Dagwood! This strip might have actually been funny if everyone at this … whatever it is … hadn’t been theatrically holding their hands to their ears. Then we would just be seeing that Dagwood had been reduced to a quivering, paranoid wreck by his evil ogre of a boss. But this is Blondie, so “funny” isn’t really on the agenda.

Judge Parker, 9/29/06

I look forward to the next week or so of Judge Parker, which will no doubt involve finding a beard on short notice.